Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [58]
“Luciente, that handkerchief—was it a present?” Connie asked.
“This one? Fasure, from Dawn for Mothers’ Day. Dawn made it p’self!”
“Mother’s Day?” She laughed. “You still have Mother’s Day!”
“We have tens and tens of holidays,” Jackrabbit boasted. “For famous liberators. For important events, like the domes-ticking of corn and wheat. The turning of the sun north and south. Famous struggles … Didn’t your society use rituals to body what you thought good? Like your football games, parades, public executings—”
“We didn’t do that! That was the old times, way before.”
“I thought on your primitive holies—”
“TV, you mean? At least we had regular programs!”
“Didn’t you view bombings, burnings, stabbings? Shootings of people? In every group, spectaclers body ideas of good. Always people try to be good as they see it, no?” His free hand waved.
They were strolling down the hill toward the village. “I don’t know. We have a religious idea of being good—a bit like what you call good, being gentle and caring about your neighbor. But to be a good man, for instance, a man is supposed to be … strong, hold his liquor, attractive to women, able to beat out other men, lucky, hard, tough, macho we call it, muy hombre … not to be a fool … not to get too involved … to look out for number one … to make good money. Weil, to get ahead you step on people, like my brother Luis. You knuckle under to the big guys and you walk over the people underneath … .” She shrugged wearily, passing the huts crawling with grape vines and roses, the orchards hung with small green fruit, the covered tanks where fish were spawning under translucent domes. Growth seemed to swarm over the land. “Good? My mother was good. What did it get her except to bleed to death at forty-four? Looking like she was sixty.” She wished sharply for a cigarette, but she had not seen any here and she remembered Luciente’s fear. “I was never able to do good enough to feel good, never able to do bad enough to do me any good.”
An older woman came up beside them, holding out her hand to Connie. “I’m White Oak. I work in the same base as Bee and Luciente. You’ve been pointed out to me and, grasp, we gossip about you. But we’ve never met. My child named perself this month too—I mean the one who was my child. That one is Thunderbolt now, and we can’t talk for another seven weeks.”
“Thunderbolt!” Luciente savored it. “I hope we’re not in for a summer of titanic names. Leaping Lightning. Stupendous Fireball. The Earth Dances, The Stars Stand Still. Heroic Revolutionary Fervor. Mao Susan B. Ferenzi. Freedom Through Constant Struggle.”
“I suppose you selected Luciente right off,” Jackrabbit crooned, giving her hair a tug. “I suppose you were too sensible, even at thirteen, ever to pick a silly name.”
“Actually I called myself White Light when I came from my naming, so you see I haven’t drifted far. But to confess, I went through the usual oddities. When I was first with Diana, I called myself Artemis.”
“Actually the twin of Artemis was Apollo. Or did you want to be Diana?” Jackrabbit moved beside them, loose-jointed, shambling. “You wanted the moon, Luci, instead of recognizing yourself a creature of the broad pragmatic day.”
“I was Panther for a while myself,” White Oak said. “As if I’d ever see one, except on the holi. And Liriope—that’s a plant we were breeding for erosion control on the old blast sites when I was first in our base.”
“I fancy that one,” Jackrabbit said. “Liriope …” He leaped ahead to assume a position as flowering plant, head hung back, mouth open, arms arched above his head.
“Venus flytrap,” White Oak said. “Don’t tease me. I remember too well when you moved here, you were going through a name a week.”
“Lord Byron, One Who Crests