The Crack Read Online Free PDF Page B

River is Broken …
Tell Laura I love her, Our Oppression is Ended …
Blue suede shoes …
    The murky brown light of the now fully-advanced morning turned the stained glass sombre. Medea’s hair was the colour of weed at the bottom of a pond. Several of the women were smoking, and a thick smog hung in the condemned rafters. With a sudden agonizing feeling of constriction, Baba jerked herself upright.
    â€˜I want to get out of here,’ she said loudly and clearly.
    â€˜Sssh!’ The woman on her left looked disapproving. ‘We’re making preparations. Can’t you see that?’
    But Noreen, on Baba’s other side, smiled in sympathy. It was clear that she too had no intention of staying in the church all day.
    â€˜Preparations for what?’ Baba asked crossly. ‘Excuse me please.’ And she rose to her feet with a determined expression; Noreen would almost certainly follow.
    â€˜To get to the other side, of course,’ the woman hissed. ‘How do you think you’re going to get there if Medea doesn’t help you over?’
    â€˜The other side?’ Baba yawned in spite of herself. ‘Why – what happens there?’
    Before the woman could answer, a great hush that seemed louder than the singing and chanting which had preceded itswept through the congregation. All the women fell to their knees. Baba was dragged down by Noreen. With a little moan of sadness, she watched a ladder in her tights run swiftly up past the knee.
    â€˜Sisters!’
    Medea, so tall now in the pulpit that her head seemed to disappear in the swirling mists of brown smoke, had become more a voice than a presence: a black voice that filled the church and echoed in the organ pipes with a booming sound that was truly terrifying.
    â€˜Sisters, we are preparing ourselves to reach the Other Side. There will be tribulations, as our oppressors will try to stop us. But let me tell you what awaits us there. A matriarchal society. More than equal pay and educational opportunities. Liberation from childbirth and childcare.’
    That’s odd, Baba thought sleepily. How can you have a matriarchal society, if that means the mothers running things, and not have children? But her brain hardly felt capable, in such conditions, of dealing with the problem. So far, she thought, it didn’t sound particularly tempting on the other side.
    â€˜A chance to develop our personalities to the full,’ Medea chanted.
    â€˜Serious subject – not sex object.’
    â€˜And abandonment of our sex roles.’
    At these words, Baba felt a sort of sadness creep over her. Surreptitiously she felt for her little bunny tail, which had become so ragged and forlorn now, and wondered if it would be possible to get back to the Playboy and ask for a replacement. And as for her ears! They were flopping all over the place. She must look a real mess.
    As if she had read her thoughts, Noreen placed an affectionate hand on Baba’s knee. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll get out of here.’
    It didn’t take long for the opportunity to present itself. But it was hardly as Baba would have wished it. In the great silence, with the women on their knees, eyes closed and hardly breathing it seemed, and the soft rushing sound of Medea’s voice playing over them like wind pumped from a bellows, footstepscould be heard coming closer and closer to the church, and then stopping in the vestibule outside.
    All the women opened their eyes and listened. There was something both strange and familiar about the footsteps. Something sinister, too; several of the women shifted uncomfortably, and for a time Medea’s message was lost.
    Baba glanced over her shoulder apprehensively. Noreen was frowning and chewing her finger. ‘I know what that sound reminds me of,’ she hissed at Baba finally. ‘It’s – it’s stiletto
heels!
Isn’t it?’ she