The shape of power is always the same; it is the shape of a tree. Root to tip, central trunk branching and re-branching, spreading wider in ever-thinner, searching fingers.
Already there are parents telling their boys not to go out alone, not to stray too far. “Once you’ve seen it happen,” says a gray-faced woman on TV. “I saw a girl in the park doing that to a boy for no reason, he was bleeding from the eyes. The eyes. Once you’ve seen that happen, no mom would let her boys out of her sight.”
“Saw you. Saw you in the graveyard with those boys. Filthy. Little. Whore.” Each word punctuated with a punch, or a slap, or a kick. She doesn’t roll into a ball. She doesn’t beg him to stop. She knows it only makes it go on longer. He pushes her knees apart. His hand is at his belt. He’s going to show her what kind of a little whore she is. As if he hadn’t shown her many times in the past.
The voice says: You heard what she said. Eve passed the apple to Adam.
Allie thinks, Maybe she was right to do it. Maybe that’s what the world needed. A bit of shaking up. Something new.
The voice says: That’s my girl.
Allie thinks, Are you God?
The voice says: Who do you say that I am?
Allie thinks, I know that you speak to me in my hour of need. I know that you have guided me on the true path. Tell me what to do now. Tell me.
The camera makes him feel powerful; as if he’s there but not there. You do what you like, he thinks to himself, but I’m the one who’s going to turn it into something. I’ll be the one who’ll tell the story.
Nothing that either of these men says is really of any great significance, because she could kill them in three moves before they stirred in their comfortably padded chairs.
It doesn’t matter that she shouldn’t, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.
She speaks quite suddenly, across Daniel, sharp like the knock at a door. “Don’t waste my time with this, Daniel,” she says.
Eve says, “So I teach a new thing. This power has been given to us to lay straight our crooked thinking. It is the Mother not the Son who is the emissary of Heaven. We are to call God ‘Mother.’ God the Mother came to earth in the body of Mary, who gave up her child that we could live free from sin. God always said She would return to earth. And She has come back now to instruct us in her ways.”
Moldova is the world capital of human sex-trafficking. There are a thousand little towns here with staging posts in basements and apartments in condemned buildings. They trade in men, too, and in children. The girl children grow day by day until the power comes to their hands and they can teach the grown women. This thing happens again and again and again; the change has happened too fast for the men to learn the new tricks they need. It is a gift. Who is to say it does not come from God?
“God loves all of us,” she says, “and She wants us to know that She has changed Her garment merely. She is beyond female and male. She is beyond human understanding. But She calls your attention to that which you have forgotten. Jews: look to Miriam, not Moses, for what you can learn from her. Muslims: look to Fatima, not Muhammad. Buddhists: remember Tara, the mother of liberation. Christians: pray to Mary for your salvation.”
The voice says to Allie: Remember, sweetheart, the only way you’re safe is if you own the place.
Allie says: Can I own the whole world?
The voice says, very quietly, just as it used to speak many years ago: Oh, honey. Oh, baby girl, you can’t get there from here.
You can turn money into anything. One, two, three, presto. Turn drugs into influence with Tatiana Moskalev, President of Bessapara. Turn your ability to bring pain and fear into a factory where the authorities will turn a blind eye to whatever you're cooking up there that sends purple-tinged steam into the skies at midnight.
The white woman—her name was Nina—had said, “Do you think you have PTSD?”
It was because she’d used her thing in bed and he’d shied away from it. Told her to stop. Started crying.
Sam says, “He was asking for it. He begged us for it. Fucking begged us, followed us, told us what he wanted done to him. Filthy little scrote, knew just what he was looking for, couldn’t get enough of it, wanted us to hurt him, would have licked up my piss if I’d asked him, that’s your fucking brother. Looks like butter wouldn’t melt, but he’s a dirty little boy.”
“You want to employ NorthStar girls yourself.”
“As my private army, here and on the border.”
It’s worth a lot of money. […] The board would be very happy to continue their association with Margot Cleary until the end of time if she could pull this off.
“And, in exchange, you want...”
“We are going to alter our laws a little. During this time of trouble. To prevent more traitors giving away our secrets to the North. We want you to stand by us.”
Thus, we institute today this law, that each man in the country must have his passport and other official documents stamped with the name of his female guardian. Her written permission will be needed for any journey he undertakes. We know that men have their tricks and we cannot allow them to band together.
When he walked past a group of women on the road—laughing and joking and making arcs against the sky—Tunde said to himself, I'm not here, I'm nothing, don't notice me, you can’t see me, there’s nothing here to see.
In the dark of the night he tells her about Nina and how she published his words and his photographs under her name. And how he knows by that that she was always waiting to take from him everything he had. And she tells him about Darrell and what was taken from her, and in that telling he knows everything; why she carries herself like this and why she's been hiding all these long weeks and why she thinks she can’t go home and why she hasn’t struck against Darrell at once and with great fury, as a Monke would do. She had half forgotten her own name until he reminded her of it.
One of them says, "Why did they do it, Nina and Darrell?”
And the other answers, “Because they could.”
“The women will die just as much as the men will if we bomb ourselves back to the Stone Age.”
“And then we’ll be in the Stone Age.”
“Er. Yeah.”
“And then there will be five thousand years of rebuilding, five thousand years where the only thing that matters is: can you hurt more, can you do more damage, can you instill fear?”
“Yeah?”
“And then the women will win.”
Look, I’m not even real. Or not real like you think “real” means. I’m here to tell you what you want to hear.
There is a voice in Margot’s head. It says; You can’t get there from here.
She sees it all in that instant, the shape of the tree of power. Root to tip, branching and re-branching. Of course, the old tree still stands. There is only one way, and that is to blast it entirely to pieces.
When the historians talk of this moment they talk about “tensions’’ and “global instability.” They posit the “resurgence of old structures” and the “inflexibility of existing belief patterns.” Power has her ways. She acts on people, and people act on her.
When does power exist? Only in the moment it is exercised. To the woman with a skein, everything looks like a fight.
UrbanDox says: Do it.
Margot says: Do it.
Awadi-Atif says: Do it.
Mother Eve says: Do it.
And can you call back the lightning? Or does it return to your hand?
As to whether men are naturally more peaceful and nurturing than women... that will be up to the reader to decide, I suppose. But consider this; are patriarchies peaceful because men are peaceful? Or do more peaceful societies tend to allow men to rise to the top because they place less value on the capacity for violence? Just asking the question.
I don’t think it’s at all a stretch to suggest that they picked works to copy that supported their viewpoint and just let the rest molder into flakes of parchment. I mean, why would they re-copy works that said that men used to be stronger and women weaker? That would be heresy, and they’d be damned for it.
This is the trouble with history. You can’t see what’s not there.
