Chapter 13

1981

GLORIA AND GEM HAD BEEN IN SACRAMENTO for eight years when they learned about the Red Grove. Luce was growing inside Gloria, the size of a kiwi. The newscasters started with a picture that had grabbed a lot of attention, a black-and-white shot of seven women, all of them bald, overlooking an estuary where the ocean's waters enter the bay.

"Now, I've seen a lot of creative ways to soak up an oil spill, but this is a new one to me," a newscaster said. Below the women, in the water, were giant ropes. The rope, the newscaster explained, was woven out of human hair. After the oil spill from one of the tankers off the coast failed to be contained, women from the community fifteen miles inland, the Red Grove, gathered all the hair they could from barbershops and hairstylists all over the county, and from their own heads too, and began weaving them together into giant ropes stuffed into pantyhose.

REDWOOD WITCHES PERFORM WATER CEREMONY, one article read. CAN A SECLUDED WOMEN'S COMMUNE SAVE THE PLANET? read another.

"Can you tell us your name, and how you knew human hair would be effective?" the reporter asked one of the women standing out on the estuary bank. The woman, who wore a tangle of turquoise necklaces, looked at the reporter holding the microphone with the steadiest gaze either of the sisters had ever seen. There was no flinching. No smiling. No nodding. Just her arm, tanned, muscular, coming up into the camera shot as her hand wrapped around the microphone, bringing it closer to her mouth.

"Think about how much oil our scalp produces, and what a great job our hair does soaking it up. It's nature's sponge," the woman said. She was bald too, with moles speckled across her face. "We recommend that scientists look into this for other spills."

"You're from the Red Grove," the reporter stated. "Which is a, uh—"

"Community," the woman cut in.

"A community," the reporter echoed. She was young, and clearly excited to be talking to the bald woman. "But you live inland a ways, so why sacrifice your hair for something miles from you?"

"The ocean connects to the bay, and the bay to the streams and rivers that flow through our whole county," the woman said. "Poison spreads. It would damage the soil and root systems that maintain the redwood ecosystem, and without that interconnected strength, we'd all be toast."

A breeze picked up right then, and the bald woman, following the sound of rustling wind, shifted her focus into the distance and said, "Look there! A heron has landed on our hair barrier."

Obligingly, the camera followed and zoomed in on a heron, gracefully standing on spindly legs, blue-feathered body facing the ocean. When the camera panned back to the reporter, all the women had turned their backs. The reporter, clearly surprised, fumbled with her microphone and then looked into the camera. "I guess some things will remain a mystery," she said, eyes smoldering. "For ABC news, I'm Ruby Wells."

"Oh!" Gem said, her eyes glued to the TV. "That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." She clutched at her heart.

"The gross hair logs?" Gloria asked, but Gem didn't answer. She was transfixed by the screen.

The following night, the news had another segment on the oil spill, though it didn't mention the women of the Red Grove, but the next night, they interviewed a scientist from a nearby college who attested to a surprising finding—the hair barriers were, in fact, soaking up large quantities of oil. They were more effective than any other known measure. "We could be part of that," Gem said softly, not looking at Gloria. "It's so perfect. The human body finally helping nature instead of destroying her."

Gem and Gloria together again on the couch, a few nights later. The news showed the image of the bald women once again, and the reporter Ruby Wells explained that other people had started to collect hair to make into these barriers. Gem jumped up from the couch, marched into the kitchen, and came back with a pair of scissors.

"No way," Gloria said, staring at her.

"I'm sending it to the women," Gem said, holding the scissors out in front of her. "We've got to take care of the weakest among us."

"You'll never do it—" Gloria started to say, but Gem brought the scissors to her shoulder-length hair and snipped. Gloria gaped.

"They turned their back on the camera like they didn't even care," Gem said. "They banded together to do something amazing." Voice lowered, like it was a secret, Gem said she'd heard it was the only place in the United States that had absolutely no record of violence against women. None. Zip.

Gloria waggled her fingers toward the TV. "I don't believe in all that hocus-pocus shit," she said.

"Might be real," Gem said, sawing through a clump of hair. "They couldn't make up the fact about the police records." But Gloria said that's just not how the world works. There aren't some chosen special people who are protected while the rest of us have to swim through the shit. She lit a cigarette and lay back against the couch, her belly already a small mound against her shirt.

"You're supposed to quit," Gem said, gentler than before.

"I'm supposed to not be pregnant," Gloria said. "Screw this baby. I'm not keeping it."

Gem collected the hair she was cutting into a pile. "There's plenty of stuff in the world that can't be explained. I mean, us?"

A commercial blared for a kitchen mop, sure to cut any woman's work in half. Gloria said that with them, it was different. They had shared a womb. And a childhood, alone together. She exhaled smoke in a foamy white stream, said that there would be too many scared people crouching in the shadows in a place like the Red Grove.

"They don't look like they're crouching in the shadows," Gem said, picking at her beer label, peeling off the paper in long strips.

"They're clearly overreacting. Think about what it was like to be a woman in the Middle Ages, a bar wench or a concubine. We have it so damned good now."

Gem shrugged and changed the channel. Said it didn't feel all that good.

Gloria sighed. "I'm not going to ruin my life and change what I'm doing because of men. I won't give them that," she said.

Gem looked at Gloria's belly, didn't say how her life was already changed by men, whether she'd wanted it to be or not. The news story had moved on. A serial burglar in the city, who'd been targeting elderly women who lived alone; he liked them to wake up while he was masturbating above them in their beds. They were interviewing the most recent victim, who clutched two small white dogs to her chest while she told the story, using their fur to dab away tears that reached her chin.

"Imagine if you grew up there," Gem said. "Imagine if we had gotten to grow all the way up surrounded by Dad and all his bar friends. Except imagine it's all women, and we're out by the ocean or in the forest. Not locked away in our bedroom. Without people like—" She fished around for the name she'd heard once and once only, after a terrible date Gloria said she'd never speak of again, from which Gloria's belly had swollen. "Without Steve. If you just knew you would be safe. Who would you be?"

"Probably less tough," Gloria said, opening her eyes and meeting Gem's.

"Maybe," Gem said. She let her eyes drift back to the TV, thought a moment. "But also, probably a lot of other things, good things that we can't even imagine." The next commercial featured a chorus of singing dogs. "I'll keep it," Gem said, her gaze on the TV, too afraid of what she was saying to make it serious with eye contact. "The baby, I mean. If you don't want it. I'll raise her."

"Her?" Gloria said, annoyed. "I don't know what it is. Feels like a monster."

"I'd take her to the Red Grove, with the bald women. I'd raise her there," Gem said. "She would get to have exactly whatever life she wanted. She'd never have to be afraid."

They were both quiet a moment, weighing how seriously to take this thing Gem had launched into their lives, whether to let it float away as if it were a joke, whether to feed it.

Finally, Gloria stood up and turned off the TV. She turned to face her sister. "Answer me honestly. Has anything so bad ever happened to you that you'd need to hide away in a place like that?"

Gem looked down at her hands, pulled at a cuticle. No, she conceded to her sister. Nothing so bad had happened.