Waking the Moon

powerful as anacondas. The one with the moon tattoo smiled slightly, her thin mouth opening to flash very white teeth.

“Who are they?”

“Oh, those are her bodyguards—”

“Bodyguards?”

Jack laughed. “Yeah, her Amazons, she calls ’em. Cloud and Kendra. They’re kickboxers. They were at the party too—”

“Angelica needs bodyguards?”

“Oh, sure,” said Jack. “She gets death threats all the time. Guys are always trying to jump her bones or else trying to cut her up. I gather her views are a little extreme—well, here, listen—”

“My name is Amanda Jeffries, from Port Lavaca, Texas,” a round-faced, heavyset woman was saying. “I was married for seventeen years to a man—”

Her voice broke. Beside her Opal jockeyed with the mike so it would catch every breath.

“—My husband used to beat on me, so bad sometimes I couldn’t go to work. And our children, too. I threatened to leave him but he always said he’d change but he never did. Then I heard you talk at Victoria Community College—”

She inclined her head and the camera angle jumped to show Angelica listening intently, her brow furrowed and her green eyes glowing with concern.

“—I heard you talk about the Warrior Goddess inside of us and I went home, I signed up for a self-defense class at the Victoria YWCA and filed for divorce.”

Opal nodded. “And your husband let you go?”

“Oh, no.” Amanda Jeffries shook her head. “He came at me with a baseball bat—”

Gasps from the audience. “What did you do?” urged Opal.

“Well, I ran outside and threw the kids in the Pontiac and tried to drive off, but he smashed the windshield—”

Another cut to Angelica, her perfect eyebrows arched, the two women behind her silent and brooding.

“And?” said Opal.

“And so I ran him over. I—I—killed him. In reverse.” More gasps; scattered applause and one deep boo. Amanda Jeffries wiped her eyes. “I—I didn’t want to do it, I loved him but—the jury said it was self-defense and the Women’s Defense Fund helped me and my children while the trial was pending —”

“Let’s hear another point of view.” Opal walked deftly through the rows of seats until she reached a burly young man scowling near the back of the room. “What do you think of Angelica Furiano’s—”

“I think she oughta be locked up—”

The camera focused on the man’s face, his brown eyes darting from Opal back to the stage. “My wife and her friend went to one of her workshops in San Diego and this woman—”

His arm jabbed out as he pointed toward Angelica.

“This—” bleeep! “—is advocating overthrowing the government—”

Boos and catcalls, so loud the man looked startled and fell silent.

“I think,” Opal said gently, “I think that she’s calling for a change in the patriarchal system in this country, not overthrowing the government.” She whirled to face the stage. “Am I correct, Angelica?”

“Yes,” Angelica’s clear voice rang out. “And—”

“Can I finish?” The man broke in angrily. “These women, they get together and they all bitch about how their husbands abuse them and they can’t get decent jobs and I’m a rapist and everything comes down to Men Suck, but I work fifty-hour weeks to support my family, I never lifted a finger against my wife or children, I supported the Equal Rights Amendment and what do I get? My wife left me, she says I was condescending to her, she says I—”

“Well, perhaps she did not correctly perceive your concern,” Angelica suggested smoothly. “Very often men are not aware that they treat their wives in a childlike fashion. You see, we’re still trained to see women in only certain ways—and other countries are worse than the United States in this, when I was in Italy it was very pronounced—the whole Madonna-Whore syndrome. Or you have this whole way of looking at women as either nurturers or as children who need constant protection. Many of the world’s ancient Goddess religions represent the Goddess as having three faces: those of the Mother, Daughter, and Crone or Destroyer. And a number of recent books help women focus on two of those aspects: Gaea, the nurturing Mother, and her daughter Kore. And that’s wonderful. I truly think these books are wonderful and I think that they’ve helped women a great deal; but it’s not enough.”

The camera moved in slowly for a close-up on Angelica’s face. Shafts of light from the silver crescent on her breast flickered across her cheeks and jaw; she looked as though she were rising up from deep clear water. Her voice grew softer, more intense. Beside me Jack leaned closer to the television set, and I could imagine everyone in that audience shifting in their seats, everyone straining to get closer to Angelica.

“—Because we can’t just ignore that other face of the Goddess. For thousands of years we’ve pretended that She doesn’t exist, that human history begins and ends with the Old Testament. But now, for the first time in millennia, women are starting to embrace Her again. And that’s marvelous, but we can’t just pick and choose which of Her aspects to honor. We have to deal with all of them. With the Full Moon and the New Moon but also with the Dark of the Moon, Hecate’s realm. We have to acknowledge the Mother and the Avenger. We must embrace She Who Mourns and She Who Creates, but we must also honor She Who Destroys.

“Because otherwise we will never be whole. In traditional patriarchal societies, men have always acknowledged their own aggressive tendencies—that’s why they’ve always been the warriors and the football players, the generals and bank presidents and—”

“The serial killers!” a shrill voice shouted. Uneasy laughter from the audience; but Angelica only nodded seriously.

“—and yes, the serial killers—but also the great artists and writers and composers. But until we as women acknowledge our own personal need for power and our own capabilities for aggression and independence, we will never be whole. We’ll continue to be good mothers and daughters, we’ll continue to be muses, we’ll continue to be victims—but we won’t be whole and strong. We won’t be the Supreme Goddess that we can be. We need to acknowledge all the aspects of the Goddess within us; we need to embrace the chthonic darkness, to welcome and awaken the Moon; and then we will be whole again. Then we will be strong, unconquerable, sovereigns of the Sacred Earth.

“Then we will be One with Her.”

Riotous applause and a few enraged shouts from the audience. A quick cut to the burly young man shaking his head and mouthing something obscene. But Opal had already abandoned him and was walking briskly back to the stage.

“Well, thank you, Angelica! I know I’ve read your books and found them incredibly empowering, and I took your Dark of the Moon workshop up in Vancouver last summer and—well, it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful! Thank you so much—

“Angelica Furiano, on a cross-country tour promoting her new best-selling book Waking the Moon: Toward a Supreme Spirituality of Women.”

Opal held up a book: I could just glimpse its title, in bright gold letters against a black background, and the glinting foil crescent that surmounted Angelica’s name. Cheers and excited yelps. Angelica stood. The studio lights made a golden aureole of her hair, and while she should have looked like a thousand other talk show guests, sheepish or giddy or simply inane, she did not. She looked as she always had, beautiful and poised and utterly regal. Very slowly, as though performing in a Noh drama, she rested one hand upon her breast, her fingers spreading to cover the lunula, and then raised the other hand to the audience as though in benediction. Once again glittering letters flashed across the screen.

ANGELICA FURIANO: WAKING THE MOON.