A Special Place for Women, Laura Hankin [brene brown rising strong .txt] 📗

and found a spot, just beyond the tree line, where I was hidden from the other women.

I didn’t know what kind of symbol would represent a failed mayor. So, with a pen in my pocket, I carved Nicole Woo-Martin’s initials into the candle. I made a circle with sea salt, then lit the candle. “Um,” I said quietly, and called up Nicole’s face into my mind, the last time I had seen it, when she had given the speech announcing her resignation. It was also on the steps of City Hall, just like at her inauguration, but hope and grandeur no longer swirled around her, and her supportive schlubby husband no longer stood by her side.

I made an error in judgment, and for that I am truly sorry. But I would never have threatened someone’s job over this, she’d said, her voice strong, but her hands trembling at her sides. I hope you can believe me. Still, I recognize that the distraction caused by this has damaged my ability to fight for our agenda, and the work can only be done if I step aside. I am heartbroken. But at the end of the day, the work must be done.

I had been heartbroken too, for my mother and for the world. I was still heartbroken. Nicole’s replacement was a business-as-usual woman who’d done nothing of note since she took over. All the exciting legislation Nicole had introduced was just sitting there, stalled. I stared at the candle. “Nicole,” I said, “I call you into my life. Let me find you, so I can talk to you and figure out the truth of what they did to you, and what the fuck you were thinking.” Maybe not the holiest of prayers, but it couldn’t hurt.

The small flame wavered in the breeze. A rustling sound came from the trees to my left, where the woods began to thicken. I turned, and for a split second I expected to see Nicole emerge—perhaps she’d been wandering in the forests all this time, and her compass was now spinning and sending her my way. But instead Vy stomped into the clearing, and over her shoulder was a bag filled with plants she’d gathered from the woods. I snuffed out the candle quickly and stuck it in my pocket.

“We’re gonna make dinner,” she said. “Come on.”

As darkness fell, we roasted root vegetables and sautéed halibut. Iris had brought along a loaf of dark pumpernickel bread. The kitchen was all gleaming marble countertops, an eight-burner stove. Margot had an old record player in the corner, and she put on Ella Fitzgerald to serenade us as we cooked. We slapped on some organic bug spray and ate on the porch. For a moment, as Margot turned the fairy lights on and Iris told a story about some celebrity who kept sending her flowers, it felt like we were at a fun, rustic bachelorette weekend, and maybe a firefighter stripper would come knocking at the door.

It wasn’t very much food when it was all split up among us. More like the first course of a tasting menu, an appetizer. My stomach rumbled, primed for the actual meal. It didn’t help that I hadn’t had lunch, assuming we’d stop somewhere on the road. None of the other women seemed bothered, though. Maybe they’d brought snack bars in their bags, or maybe they were used to more restrictive diets. Or maybe they wanted to feel lighter, more alert—like tech bros, with their intermittent fasting—for what was coming next. Margot stood up. “It’s time,” she said. The women all disappeared into their rooms as Margot beckoned me over.

“Here,” she said, and handed me a black robe of my own.

“Very chic,” I said. She raised an eyebrow and looked at me. “I mean, thank you. Do I . . . do I wear anything underneath?”

“What do you think?” she asked, then laughed her throaty laugh. She stepped closer to me and reached out a finger, tracing my mother’s necklace, the one we’d talked about at Raf’s restaurant opening the very first time we met. “Keep this on, though.”

FORTY-ONE

We made our way into the woods. Margot led the group, holding up a lantern. I carried some logs for the fire, grasping them haphazardly in a quest to avoid splinters, hoping that we weren’t going to wander into poison ivy or a spider’s nest. Crickets chirped and tree branches rustled. Dead leaves crackled underfoot. A few of the women whispered to one another, an isolated giggle breaking out, but for the most part, we were silent as we swished through the bramble.

Besides Margot’s lantern, the only source of light was the glowing orb of the moon above, bigger and more golden than I’d ever seen it. A moon on steroids, surrounded by pinpricks of stars. I wasn’t used to such darkness. I shivered, both because I was cold underneath my robe, and because I was scared.

Do you remember the kind of fear that you felt as a child, when you had the sense that anything was possible? Ghosts might be lingering in the shadows. A hand could reach out from underneath your bed and drag you down. Perhaps a vampire lurked in your attic, waiting for the moment when you were alone and defenseless to bare his fangs. As a grown woman, I had plenty to fear in the real world—a man walking too close behind me at night, a man yelling hateful things in people’s faces on the subway, a man coming through my window or revealing his true colors or doing any number of things. But the fear that came over me as we walked deeper into the dark woods was like it was in childhood again. Terrifying, but tinged with a sense of possibility. Spooky, and just a little bit full of wonder. I didn’t fear a man tonight. I feared these women, and the strange things I could not see in