Just out., January 01, 1987, Page 21, Image 21

The Fires of Winter Solstice
Mince pies and loyalty figure in Lily's awakening to women s
spirituality; a short story by Lee Lynch.
B Y
L E E
L Y N C H
he fire, thought Lily Ann Lee, who
was six feet tall and black-skinned
under her firefighters’ regalia, could
have been worse. A big old warehouse full of
furniture, an alert little watchman who’d
smelled the smoke despite the pint in his pocket.
It had been clear right away, from the smell,
that the fire was electrical in origin, so as soon
as they’d controlled the flames, they began the
tedious job of finding where it had all started,
and making certain it spread no further. This
was the kind of work that demanded only about
half o f Lily A nn’s mind. She drifted above the
garbagey wet smoke smell, above the splintered
furniture, above her light on the wall she
excavated like a miner for signs of burning
wiring.
Now and then a distinct whiff of burnt cedar
reached her from that stack of hope chests she
and Horrigan had wet down, then axed for fear
o f sparks. A smell like that from the cedar
they’d burned in Alley Pond Park last year for
the Solstice Ritual. Her friends from the
W omen’s Food Coop had been urging her to
return this year, but damn, she’d been so
uncomfortable.
All those white girls, she thought, those
skinny, pale women with their dead-serious
incantation of the goddesses. There was some­
thing so thin and pale about their very cere­
mony. They gathered in circles like doubting,
but hopeful, supplicants who prayed extra hard
to get past a sense of make believe. The priestess
w ho’d studied out in California seemed so in­
tense and desperate, so determined to perform
her office exactly right, not to let any wavering
spirit she called on flee in the tendrils of smoke
that rose from the tiny illicit fire in the park. She
wondered if Dawn and Goldy, the other sisters
in the circle, felt strange, too. Did she want to
go back into the dark night to sit in their cold
circle?
She remembered, as she worked along the
wall, checking periodically on big beefy Horri­
gan across from her, the promise of light in the
womens’ words.
T
You can’t kill the spirit
She’s like a mountain
Bold and strong
She goes on and on *
^ ,
It was getting smokey again. Had Horrigan
found something? No. She couldn’t see its
source. She put her mask on, breathing easier,
peeing somewhat better, and waved to Horrigan
who didn’t seem bothered by the smoke yet and
.Ignored her signal. He was a temporary partner,
an old-timer whose regular partner was on vaca­
tion like hers. Horrigan was a bigot, but close
enough to retirement not to buck this pairing
with a black fire im-personator, as he called the
women in the company. The only thing Lily
A - had over the other women, he’d made
clear, was her cooking.
She peered throught the smoke to the wires
she followed. Upstairs more o f the company
searched, heavy-booted, as carefully as she.
Sometimes she felt closer to these guys her life
depended on, who depended on her, than to the
women in ritual circles. While she believed in
women’s spirituality, found it closer than any­
thing else she could accept to her own heritage,
it didn’t fe e l anywhere as meaningful as the
firehouse Christmas tree, the chaplain who
came briefly to pray for the dead, the injured
and the lucky ones each holiday season. Didn’t
warm her even as much as the staticky radio
insistently filling their living quarters with
carols. All the firefightes, women and men,
talked bah-humbug and complained abou
Christmas day duty, but the worn in brought in
baked goods, the guys gave out cartons of
cigarettes or quarts of liquor.
Lily Ann had made a ritual of reporting for
her Christmas shift early with four uncooked
mincemeat pies, and cooking them right there,
filling the fire house with their smell. Last year
a false alarm had come in while they baked.
Lily Ann had forgotten the pies until she was
halfway back to the firehouse. She’d raced up to
the oven. Someone had turned them off, but
she’d never been able to find out who.
She was chanting to herself.
You can't kill the spirit
She’s like a mountain
Bold and strong
She goes on and on
Her back ached from holding her arms up,
the backs of her legs were beginning to tremble
from the strain, the mask was biting into her
face which had swelled in the heat. She worked
methodically on. Crazy things happened in
these old buildings: fire just waiting to explode
out o f a wall where it was trapped, beams so
weak the heat and water sent them crashing
through the ceiling below. Horrigan was masked
now, too, professional, thorough, like her.
H e’d probably dragged many a black woman
from a burning building. She hoped again that
she could rely on him to rescue one more, even,
she smiled to herself, if she was an unwelcome
peer.
Unlike at Alley Pond, where she, Goldy,
Dawn, were welcomed waimly, treated with
respect, even wooed by the white women
w ho’d learned that a healthy culture was an
inclusive one. How the burnt cedar smell pulled
her back to that night, convinced her that some
part o f herself longed for, belonged with the
women as they lit their candles to light the way
through a dark and cold winter ahead.
They’d used the cedar for purification,
burned it carefully, with sentries posted, know­
ing full well that discovery meant more than a
fine for their little bonfire surrounded by
buckets of water. Celebrating the solstice was
pagan; the authorities could choose to make
much of it. Were there still laws on the books
against witchcraft?
Her rebellious self would return to the fire
circle for certain. Hadn’t her people, after all,
been as defiant? They’d salvaged their African
fires and chants, bits and pieces anyway, from
the puritanical wrath they found on these
shores. In the solstice circle she’d sat cross-
legged, ass cold against the ground, feeling the
bodies of those ancestors swell and fill and heat
her own body, till she felt like a great Amazon
warrior, many many daughters o f daughters,
gargantuan and powerful. Was this fantasy or
memory, she’d wondered. Hadn’t the Amazons
come from Africa, been dark-skinned?
You can't kill the spirit
She’s like a mountain
Bold and strong
She goes on and on
The warehouse was silent but for the shifting
feet, the shuffling boots. She felt as if she were
mining the world for light and heat, a lot more
o f both than the womens’ candles. The priestess
had instructed each woman to light the candle of
the woman to her left, and to address the topic of
power when the light reached her. How they’d
gather power to warm themselves, arm them­
selves against the frozen wasteland of patri­
archal culture.
Well, here I am, thought Lily Ann, working
with that very patriarchal beast, sure hot enough
now. Sweat ran down her face. She couldn’t
mop it with her rubbery sleeve. Was the work
making her hotter, or was she nearing a hidden
fire?
I couldn’t survive that African sun now. she
thought. My blood’s changed. Where do I
belong — the cold park, the hot warehouse,
neither? The men stomped and chopped, get­
ting noisy with frustration as they searched for
fires that might not be there.
“ You can’t kill the spirit,’’ the women had
chanted. But even Goldy and Dawn’s faces
looked drawn and weak and their voices had
sounded thin, quavery. Did Lily Ann want a
spirit like she'd seen in her own churches? One
that would so move woman after woman that
they’d flare into words or song and testify to its
strength? Something, anything but polite turn-
taking, awkwardly recited words. It seemed
that she, along with the others, chipped and
chipped away at the wall between them and
their spirituality, bit by bit cut into the plaster
that held them back.
Fire makes a sound like a great gulp when it
finds enough oxygen to swallow. Lily Ann leapt
back from the box-sized inferno that exploded
at her. Her sweat was gone. Her training, like a
blind faith, took herover. She quickly, distinct­
ly, told her radio she needed help even as she
turned to summon Horrigan. He’d heard the
great gulp, though, and had begun his run
across to her when another dreaded sound filled
her ears. A crack, a tearing, a “ W hoa!” of
surprise as Horrigan crashed through the floor.
So close to retirement, Lily Ann thought, and
turned her back to the spreading flames. She ran
along what she’d later picture as an aisle of
candles — the flames reflected in her mask’s
eyepiece — toward Horrigan who hung over the
deep dark basement below. Cold air gusted up
toward the flames, drawn like the rest of the
firefighters who she could hear rushing to con­
tain them. She gave them the flames like gifts,
trusting to their skills.
Earlier she'd noted the placement of posts in
the huge room and now ran to one, attached her
rope, then treaded softly to the edges of the cold
hole. She was big but still lighter than a running
man. She prayed to the goddess that the edge
would hold and lay, belly down, to crawl and
stretch till she reached Horrigan.
She's like a mountain
Bold and strong
She goes on and on
Damn, she thought as she attached the two
rings which must hold Horrigan’s weight, damn
if that vision of herself as an Amazon didn’t
come back to her and make her feel trebly
strong. And damn, she thought again as Horri­
gan heaved himself finally over the edge and
they scuttled away from the dark and the cold —
damn if that aisle o f candles wasn’t there in her
head to guide them through the thick smoke to
safety.
They both grabbed hoses and helped drag
them in. then trained them on the fire. The hoses
were bonds she could see, linking them against
danger. Yet the circle whose spirit she hadn’t
been able to see, touch, believe, had been there
for her, too. She’d neverexpected to feel the joy
that flooded her now in this dark, rank-smelling
fire site. And she’d neverexpected Horrigan’s
words, behind heron the hose.
“ For a minute, he shouted. “ I thought I
might not be around this year to save your
mince pies!”
© 1987 Lee Lynch
* © 1977, Naomi Littlebear from “ Like A
Mountain.” •
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r> Just Out • 24 y January, 1987