Fatima is out in the vegetable garden again, trying to make it rain. Ever since her mom sent her that family tree and Fatima found out she's one-thirtysecond Cherokee, she's been infuckingsufferable with the braids and drums and the Oh-Great-Spirit-ing before meals. "Fatima," I yell out the kitchen window. "You're from Bayonne. Get the goddamn hose, already." Fatima just keeps shuffling around in a circle, every now and then throwing up her hands in a big wide V and sticking out her tits and bending her face into the sun.

I remember when Eddie bought her those tits. Fatima and I were sharing an apartment in Jersey and topless-wrestling four nights a week at The Grease Pit. This guy Eddie comes in two, three times, and before I know it Fatima's moving in with him. He bought her these monster tits and got her dancing at Club Expose, and I'm left rolling around in the jell-o with a bunch of really vulgar girls with bad teeth.

Couple of months later Fatima calls me out of the blue, says Eddie broke her wrist and fucked the girl at the dry cleaners, and did I think she could move back in with me? Of course I said yes; Fatima is one hard luck story after another, but we've been friends a long time. So Fatima, real grateful, got me a job at the club. Although I just waited tables. I can't afford new tits, myself.

Anyways, Fatima takes up with this new guy, Shasta Wolf. Very deep guy, very spiritual Fatima says. I says to her Fatima, if he's so fucking spiritual, how come he's prowling the pussy bars I wonder? But Fatima says he's an artist and a visionary and I don't know what-all else, and she brings him by the apartment a couple three times and I have to admit, he's not too big an asshole. He's gentle and he doesn't ever get loud, and he seems really ... serene or something.

So come to find out Shasta Wolf wants Fatima to move out to some farm way the hell and gone in the country, some "harmonious community" he's setting up. Seems like Fatima feels bad about the last time she ditched me for a guy, because she tells Shasta Wolf, "I'm not going unless Gina gets to come too."

Gets to? sounds like some kind of hippie free-love nightmare to me, so I tell her, Hey, pass, no thanks, you go ahead. But he'll throw you out and you'll come back, so make sure he doesn't talk you into shaving your head and carving a swastika between your eyebrows. Because that's not a look they tend to favor at Expose.

So off goes Fatima and Shasta, and I think good riddance to freaky rubbish. Except that very same week I get the dreaded envelope under the door. Says my building is going co-op; I have a month to buy or fly. And if I told you what they were asking (the insider price mind you) for that broken down old piece-of-shit retirement home for cockroaches, well, you wouldn't even believe me.

I call Fatima and ask her can I have a place to stay, just temporarily. She is just so completely tickled, you can tell. So I move out to this crazy commune deal, and I find out a couple of things fast.

One, Shasta Wolf is loaded. I mean loaded. A trust fund kid from Princeton, if you can believe that. He's got this amazing house, way out in the country, practically a mansion. And a dozen acres of the prettiest land you ever want to see.

Two, it's not any big commune. In fact, me and Fatima and Shasta Wolf are the only ones living out here full time. And the other people who come and go are serious and hard working and they don't take drugs or party or nothing. It's fucking dead out here.

Three, Fatima and Shasta Wolf are into this weird sort of religion, this spiritual enlightenment stuff that has to do with meditating and living in harmony with the earth and a bunch of junk I really didn't pay attention to. Except the no sex part, that caught my attention.

"You're telling me," I asked her," You're telling me this guy picks you up, a stripper, and takes you to live at Stately Fucking Wayne Manor, and he's not even banging you?" Fatima just gives me this sad superior smile that she's acquired of late, and shuts her eyes and starts kind of humming to herself.

But it's a hell of a set-up. I only work about two hours a day, housework or weeding the garden or feeding the sheep and chickens. And for an hour in the morning and a half hour after dinner, I have to go meditate with them. The incense and the whale-song music is kind of a drag, but mostly I just close my eyes and remember all the phone numbers I've ever had since I was a little kid, or name all fifty states, or something like that, and the time goes pretty fast. The food is kind of weird, for sure, but in the first two months I lived here I lost 12 pounds. Although I'm not losing any more.

Which brings me to Fact Number Four. The Fact that's probably going to blow this sweet deal all to hell for me. Turns out Shasta Wolf isn't as in to the no-sex feature of the Big Spiritual Journey as Fatima is. Turns out moreover that Shasta Wolf favors natural over store-bought tits. Turns out Shasta Wolf decides to give me all the easy jobs on the work schedule as long as I give him what he wants during that extra free time, if you get my drift.

Which has been fine, no complaints at all. In fact, it's been a little enjoyable, if you want the truth. Except now, turns out I'm pregnant.

I watch Fatima out in the garden and run my hand over my belly. I know that even in these big batik dresses we wear, the truth is going to be pretty fucking obvious any day now. I can't exactly figure out why I've stayed around so long. Or stayed pregnant so long, for that matter. Maybe this place is rubbing off on me. There really is a harmony or something that comes out of simple junk like eating dark bread and sleeping hard and breathing through your nose. I can't explain it. I haven't had this Big Transplendent Enlightenment, or anything. I just feel more right about stuff than I ever felt slurping around in the jell-o. Things have a way of coming together in the most unlikely ways when you're out here in the quiet. Things have a way of feeling absolutely right.

Under my hand, I feel a flutter, like I've cupped a grasshopper to my hard belly. But it's on the inside: the baby. I catch my breath and look out the window just as the rain starts. Fatima reaches up and throws back her head. I watch her catch the warm rain in her hands and her mouth, watch it wet her crazy braids and her tie-dyed dress and her fabulous tits. And I feel sort of crazy, so I throw my hands up too, throw them out in a big wide V, right there in the kitchen. And then me and Fatima and the baby, we all dance together in the rain.

(previously published in Literary Potpourri)