Myrtle of Willendorf Read online

  Myrtle of Willendorf

  Rebecca O’Connell

  namelos

  www.namelos.com

  Copyright © 2000 Rebecca O’Connell

  Published by arrangement with Boyds Mills Press, Inc.

  All rights reserved

  First namelos edition, 2009

  This work is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies

  of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means,

  including without limit email, file transfer, paper print out, or any other

  method is a violation of international copyright law.

  This Library of Congress CIP Data refers to the hardcover edition

  O’Connell, Rebecca

  Myrtle of Willendorf / Rebecca O’Connell.—1st ed.

  p.cm.

  Summary: A bright and artisitc young woman with a

  fondness for junk food experiences a kooky modern-day

  coming of age by way of the Goddess within.

  [1. Goddess religion—Fiction. 2. Self-acceptance—Fiction.

  3. Body image—Fiction. 4. Overweight persons—Fiction.

  5. Friendship—Fiction. 6. Coming of age—Fiction.] I. Title

  PZ7.02167 My 2000

  [fic]—dc21

  00-029386

  for John

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: The Coven

  Below Protozoa

  Sun Tea

  Moon Time

  Warm Jungle Rain

  Green Eggs and Ham

  Boston Fern

  Beloved of the Goddess

  A Bold Statement

  Imagine the Carnage

  Quiche Cups

  Blue Salt

  The Land of Counterpane

  Rascally Bastards

  Nasal Discharge

  Class Couple

  Refuge, Safety, Haven

  Two by Two

  Gusto

  Blue Moon

  Myrtle of Willendorf

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Myrtle of Willendorf

  Prologue: The Coven

  “Won’t you join our coven?” Margie Martin asked me one sunny September afternoon in our junior year.

  “Well, Margie, you know me. I’ve never really been much of a joiner,” I replied.

  “Just come to our ceremony on Saturday.”

  Margie and I had become friendly after discovering that we both read mythology the way our classmates pored over Mademoiselle and Seventeen. But Margie was a practicing pagan, whereas I was merely interested in the classical roots of the Western tradition. And now Margie wanted me to come to a ceremony.

  It wasn’t like I had a date with the captain of the football team or an important awards banquet to attend, so at 7:30 the following Saturday I rang Margie’s doorbell. Mrs. Martin told me, “Go on down to The Den, dear.”

  Margie’s house had a furnished basement which they called The Den. That night, though, I thought it looked more like The Sepulcher. The only light came from four candles the size of coffee cans spaced evenly atop the family’s upright piano. The piano was draped with an ornate Indian-print bedspread that transformed it into some sort of altar.

  Besides the bayberry candles, the piano supported an assortment of what I supposed were the tools of the trade—I mean, craft. There was a blue glass bottle filled with some clear liquid, a peacock feather, a potted geranium, an unlit white votive candle, and a little lacquered box.

  Margie was seated in front of the altar. She usually kept her hair in a long braid, but tonight she had it brushed out like a shiny cape. The look was a little disconcerting, because Margie’s hair and eyes were the same color. Lots of people have brown hair and brown eyes, but usually they’re two different shades of brown. Margie’s eyes were gold, and her hair was the exact same hue, not blond but a very, very light brown. I knew it wasn’t fake; Mrs. Martin had the exact same coloring.

  Margie sat facing a semicircle of three chairs. Two were occupied by girls I barely knew. I guessed the third was for me.

  “Welcome, Myrtle,” said Margie very formally, with a sweeping gesture toward the empty chair. I sat down and raised my eyebrows in greeting to the girl on my right, Bobbie Sedge.

  Bobbie and I had been friends back in fourth grade when we agitated for animal rights on behalf of the classroom fish and hamsters. The fifth-grade classroom had no pets, and Bobbie and I drifted apart. Now, in eleventh grade, we inhabited completely different social strata. I was a solitary artist, and Bobbie was in the eco-political set. She sported a bracelet made of genuine hemp and campaigned for more vegetarian choices in the cafeteria. I was surprised to see her here. I didn’t know Margie even knew her.

  If I was surprised to see Bobbie, I was shocked to recognize the girl on my left. Sheila Kurtz had been the only student in the history of Seneca High School to bring her infant daughter to the junior prom. Sheila was a year ahead of me (in school; she was about ten years ahead of me in life experience), and we never had any classes together. I couldn’t recall ever speaking with her or, for that matter, seeing her at a distance of less than twelve feet. But she leaned over, gave my arm a warm squeeze, and said, “Hi, Myr. Glad you could make it.”

  Margie held her hands out, palms up. Bobbie and Sheila each took one and looked at me. I gave my right and left hands to Bobbie and Sheila, respectively. Bobbie’s hand was dry and cold and armored with silver rings. Sheila’s felt like a warm baked potato.

  Margie closed her eyes and intoned, “We have gathered this evening to honor the Goddess as she is manifest in our world and in ourselves.

  “The Goddess is the personification of the life force in all things. The Goddess-power is in each of us.”

  As Margie spoke, Bobbie squared her shoulders; Sheila lifted her chin. Margie continued in that same serious voice, “The life force is female. Ancient people knew this and worshipped a female deity. They saw that new life came from women’s bodies and was nurtured at women’s breasts. This was beautiful to them. Women’s bodies meant life. Life was to be celebrated, and women’s bodies were to be celebrated.

  “Women’s bellies, women’s breasts, women’s hips, thighs, buttocks. This was the cradle of life; they should be full, rich, lush.”

  Margie was panting a little now, and her cheeks were flushed. Bobbie leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, a Mona Lisa smile on her lips. Sheila stared at Margie and nodded rapidly, squeezing my hand at each downbeat.

  Margie caught her breath and continued, “We see the beauty of the Goddess in every aspect of the natural world. Hence, we welcome the spirit of the Goddess into our circle with the four elements of Nature.

  “Fire.”

  Margie produced a match from somewhere and lit the white candle from the altar. It was coconut scented. She handed it to Bobbie. Bobbie handed it to me. I gave it to Sheila, who passed it to Margie, who replaced it on the altar and picked up the feather.

  “Air.”

  The feather made its way around the circle, and so it went with the blue bottle (“Water”) and the geranium (“Earth”).

  The last item on the altar was the lacquered box. Margie set it on her lap and opened the lid. Inside was a carved figure. It looked like a miniature obese woman. It had ittybitty arms folded over enormous round breasts. Beneath that was a wide, round abdomen, so the torso looked like two big grapes stuck onto a small plum. Her short, tapered legs seemed to end at the knees, and atop all that was a little bumpy knob for a head.

  “Ha! That looks like me right before I had Jilly,” said Sheila.

  That looks like me right now, I thought.

  “This is how ancient
people imagined the Goddess,” said Margie. “Before God was a pale, thin man, people worshipped a robust, bountiful woman. This is the Venus of Willendorf. Archaeologists found the original in Willendorf, Austria. She is over twenty-five thousand years old. Dozens of similar sculptures have been found all over Europe. She was the Goddess of Neolithic people, the original deity worshipped by humans.”

  Margie picked up the figure and cradled it in two hands. She looked at it, but she was speaking to us.

  “Since then,” she said, “patriarchal religion has tried to obliterate Goddess worship but never fully succeeded. Throughout the ages, all over the world, women like us have gathered to honor the Goddess and honor her power, our power.”

  This concluded the spiritual-ecstasy portion of the meeting, and we shortly turned to a discussion of the upcoming harvest celebration. We adjourned upon Mrs. Martin’s arrival with Hawaiian Punch and pineapple upside-down cake.

  Margie was herself a fruitcake. But she was nice, and there was something about this ceremony I liked. I’d always been kind of attached to Artemis, the virgin huntress, and Athena, the gray-eyed embodiment of wisdom. The way Margie told it, they were all facets of the one Goddess we honored at our meetings.

  I went back to Margie’s the next week, and the next. Sheila was too busy with her baby to attend with any regularity, and Bobbie’s interest in women’s mysteries waned as her interest in the president of the vegetarian club waxed. By Thanksgiving, Margie and I had become the core membership of Seneca High’s coven.

  I stayed in all of my junior and most of my senior year, close to one hundred Saturday nights spent in The Den. Maybe that’s why, even after everything that happened, Margie still wants to be friends. She sends me e-mail sometimes, postcards too.

  I never write back.

  Below Protozoa

  I should have been taking notes on the biology lecture, but I filled my binder with sketches instead. I drew a strapping young paramecium offering a bouquet to a sweet, shy paramecium whose cilia were swept up in a flattering coif.

  Paramecia mate. That’s not fair. They taught us in high school that paramecia, single-celled creatures that live in pond water, reproduce asexually. When they need to be fruitful and multiply, they simply split in two. We even got to see it happen under the microscope. Now, two years later, in Bio 101, I was learning that paramecia can reproduce sexually, too. This really bothered me.

  I was the only living creature on the face of the Earth who didn’t get to pair off and mate. I was below protozoa on the scale of social evolution. I was literally less romantically adept than pond scum.

  I couldn’t take this kind of stress. I would have to stop and get an ice cream on my way back to the house I shared with Jada.

  Freshmen are required to live on campus. If you don’t fill out a roommate request form—and I didn’t—you are randomly assigned. I got Jada. We did our two semesters in McLeod Hall, and now we were sophomores, subletting a house for the summer.

  It’s the kind of thing you do to yourself, like slamming your hand in a car door or volunteering to look after your neighbors’ pet cockatiel while they’re on vacation. I was contractually bound to live with Jada from May 18 through August 20, and I had no one but myself to blame.

  Jada’s primary motivation for moving off campus had been to get a room where she could be alone with her boyfriend, Keith Capri, a.k.a. Goat (for his devotion to the sport of rock climbing). She only invited me along to share the rent. I tried not to let this bother me, but without much success. Lately I had been seeking solace in double chocolate cones more and more often.

  Licking my fingers and savoring the lingering flavor of cocoa and butterfat, I trudged up the back steps and into the kitchen.

  “Hey, Myr,” Jada called from upstairs, “you got some mail. I put it on the kitchen table for you.”

  Maybe Jada and I weren’t really so different. We shared a similar philosophy of coping with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. She had a T-shirt that said, “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.” Change “shopping” to “eating,” and it was a motto I could adopt as my own.

  We were in complete agreement about the housework, too. The state of the kitchen was a testimonial to our compatibility. The sink held a crusty pasta pot (Jada’s), a greasy frying pan (mine), assorted vegetable peelings (Jada’s), and a lump of instant mashed potatoes (mine). I could almost see wavy smell-lines wafting up from it. Perhaps I’d just step back onto the porch for a minute. I picked up the postcard and brought it outside.

  How appropriate: a postcard from Margie Martin. My day had already included such pleasures as seismic menstrual cramps, a devastating biology lesson, and a leaky sugar cone. Might as well add on a postcard from a kook.

  The Lincoln Memorial. That almost made sense. The Washington Monument she would have considered too phallic. Jefferson had owned slaves, and the White House was the home of he who embodied the white male power structure. Still, it surprised me that she had selected our sixteenth president—another dead white male, a pawn and perpetrator of the patriarchy—to bring me her news. I would have expected, maybe, a close-up of the famous cherry blossoms with Margie’s added caption, “The vulva of the Goddess.”

  Margie had written to say that she had a summer job in Washington, D.C., fundraising for an international relief agency. How mainstream of her. I wondered what she wore to work. I wondered if she still had her menstruation dress. Shortly after my first coven meeting, Margie had appeared, breathless, at my front door carrying this wondrous garment.

  “It cost eighty dollars, but I don’t regret spending one penny of it!” she said. “I will wear it in honor of the Goddess!”

  She unfurled a blue corduroy jumper with red and purple peonies appliquéd to the front pocket.

  “So I can celebrate my days of power!” she said.

  I folded the postcard and put it in my pocket. I didn’t know why she kept sending them to me. Couldn’t she take a hint?

  I looked around our rickety wooden porch. Jada had a jar of sun tea brewing. I wondered where she’d found such a monster. The jar looked like it had originally held about six quarts of mayonnaise, not that Jada would ever have owned a jar of mayonnaise. As long as I had known her, no oil-based food had ever sullied the gullet of Jada Damascene. My roommate subsisted on iced tea, fresh vegetables, and whole wheat pasta. She looked upon my diet of pizza, ice cream, and canned ravioli as some exotic and revolting cuisine. One night I offered her a Pepsi. A normal roommate would have graciously accepted or politely declined, but Jada acted as if I had offered her a glass of termite milk. She even made a tiny, presumably involuntary, gagging sound. The thought of all those empty calories made her physically ill.

  I stared at the jar and thought about Jada.

  I heard, Clink, clink-clink, SPLASH!, and then the jar wasn’t there anymore, and my legs, socks, and tennis shoes were soaked with warm tea.

  Sun Tea

  “Oh, Myr! Are you okay?” Jada had heard the crash and came out onto the porch.

  She looked like she was on her way to rehearsal. Jada was one of the few who could look graceful in a pair of bulky rubber pants. She said that they were to keep her muscles warm. It was supposed to go to 85 degrees today, but she was wearing her rubber pants. She was also wearing a black leotard and a concerned expression.

  “I’m sorry about your sun tea,” I said. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “Don’t worry about the tea, but honestly, you’re way too stressed out. You should exercise more. Work off your tension. Physical fitness is not just about being in good shape. It adds grace and confidence, so you don’t bump into things!”

  I’m sure Jada meant well, but I couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying. It was hard to have a conversation with Jada because I always felt like I was engaging in discourse with a llama. She would have blended right into a herd: long, flexible neck, large, lavishly lashed eyes, soft black hair in corkscrew curls. She l
ooked just like one.

  “Jada, the thing is, I didn’t knock it over. I was standing by the steps when I …”

  I couldn’t quite tell her when what. I couldn’t quite say, “when I caused the jar to break by tapping into my natural mystical powers and beaming destructive thought waves at it.” The idea was too hard to take seriously. Even I, with two years of coven-based instruction behind me, didn’t really believe it. But I had a creeping suspicion it was true.

  Jada tried to help me out, “It fell? When the jar fell?” she said.

  “Well,” I said, “the jar didn’t exactly fall. I know this sounds crazy, but it, like, disintegrated. When I looked at it.”

  She appeared to ruminate on this idea for a few moments, then asked, “Do you think your feet on the steps could have, you know …”

  What she meant was, “Do you think it is possible that you’re so heavy that your footfalls actually shook the porch and toppled the jar?” But she was having trouble finding a way to put it diplomatically, so she tried another approach.

  “You mean you just looked at the jar and broke it?” she said.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but that’s clocks, not jars of tea.”

  A blank look from Jada, and then she turned tail (I almost expected to see a short, furry tail, but it was just her rubber-clad dancer’s rump) and walked over to the pile of broken glass and sodden tea bags at the edge of the porch. She crouched by the evidence in a flat-footed squat.

  “And you’re sure you didn’t accidentally push it?” she asked.

  “I’m sure.” What did she think I was? Some kind of mad jar-smasher?

  “Well, then, there’s only one possible explanation.”

  Jada stood up and came back to where I was standing. I had learned over the better part of a semester to tell when Jada was being facetious. It had to do with the way she held her long, long neck. She was holding it that way now and smiling a goofy llama-smile.