Commune of Women Read Online Free PDF

coat smeared with blood, sobbing uncontrollably.
    And then, off to her right, there’s this vision straight from Bruegel; one of those ragged, lice-infested crones you see in the background of his paintings, lugging huge loads of firewood or lurking in the darkened doorway of a hovel. She’s a vision in gray – ashen face, grizzled hair, faded clothing. She wavers, ghostly, staring toward the door where the shot-up vending machine is bleeding its canned and bottled bodily fluids onto the floor.
    “Shee-it!” says the Bruegel. “All them drinks goin ta waste!”
    No thought, apparently, for what else might be wasted, just on the other side of that door.
Ondine
    Ondine’s afraid to look up.
    What in God’s name has happened?
    Are they still barricaded, or did the terrorists get into the room?
    She lies still and listens, barely daring to breathe.
    Then there’s a voice like a parrot’s, rough and raucous, saying something about wasted drinks. No gunfire afterward. They must be safe.
    She lifts her head to look around. She’s on the floor, at eye level with the dirty, worn skirt of a shabby couch. The fabric is faded brown, patterned with stylized flowers in beige and teal. The floor beneath her is white linoleum, streaked with gray – and none too clean.
    Ondine rolls to her left to pull herself up by the front of the couch. Slipping her hand onto the seat cushion, she feels something sticky and wet, just as the smell hits her – that briny, metallic smell of blood. She remembers it from the morgue, still fresh on Jackie’s body.
    She pulls herself up and discovers its source, a beautiful young black woman, with blood seeping – no, more like pouring – from her left shoulder.
    Ondine lets out a shriek. “My God! I’ve never seen anyone bleed like this! Someone... help! ”
    A calm, firm voice comes from behind her. She realizes through the fog of shock that it’s giving her instructions.
    “Find something you can use to apply pressure,” it’s saying. “You, with the long hair. Yes, you. Use your jacket.”
    Ondine turns uncomprehending eyes toward the door. The voice is issuing from a huge woman who, nevertheless, has a voice like melted butter, fluid and sweet. Ondine shakes her head at her. She has no idea what she wants.
    The big woman rises from a crouched position next to the vending machine barricade and hunches towards Ondine, keeping her head down. Ondine feels instant relief. Somehow, this woman exudes confidence, even in this madhouse.
    “Who’s got something cotton?” the giant asks, her eyes sweeping the room. “You there, in the blue suit. Give me that scarf... Yes, that one. Quick!”
    A fat woman in an atrocious, shiny polyester suit comes wobbling out of the corner, untying her neck scarf and hiccupping as she comes. Her face is smeared with blood that’s already drying and that doesn’t seem to have issued from her own person, as far as Ondine can tell.
    The giant woman grabs the scarf from the fat woman in one quick, definitive pluck and turns without hesitation to the woman on the couch. “Help me get her coat off,” she says to Ondine, not gruffly, just very authoritatively. Ondine kneels down in front of the couch and struggles feebly with buttons on the black woman’s suit jacket. The injured woman groans, as if the smallest touch pains her even in unconsciousness.
    “Here, let me,” says the big woman. She reaches into her jeans and comes out with a pocketknife. She flicks open a blade and, in one deft slice, cuts the sleeve of the black woman’s jacket from wrist to shoulder. Then, she works the blade through the neckline, cuts outward through the thickness of fabric at the shoulder and peels the jacket off, as if it were a banana skin.
    There’s a thin white blouse beneath, saturated in blood. Ondine can only tell it’s white by the very top of the shoulder that has somehow remained pristine. The big woman wields her knife like an expert. In one quick movement, she