The High Order of the Pecan Sandies

Margo Solana flashed her megawatt smile and suddenly the room darkened. I squinted in the sun-soaked solarium, but I couldn’t discern the source of the shadow. Was it her stellar smile? The diamond collar twinkling around her neck? The sunbeams that haloed her billowy bixie cut? I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve learned that not all light is pure. Impure light casts shadows. Pure light does not. This truth guides me to this day.

“It is with great pleasure that we gather today to welcome Catalina Monroe as the newest member of our most prestigious society–The High Order of the Pecan Sandies.” Margo’s southern drawl poured over us seated ladies like honey, thick and sugar-sweet. I perked up at the sound of my name, pulled my unironed apricot blazer as close to closed as possible around my fibroid-fat belly, and prepared to stand up.

“As chancellor of BrightStar Academy,” Margo continued, causing me to remain seated. “It is my personal privilege and singular mission to lead this institution toward unparalleled excellence in its efforts to uplift the masses through a dogged dedication to the discovery and disbursement of truth and light. The High Order of the Pecan Sandies is a private, hand picked coterie of educators, alumni, and some of the most esteemed minds in academia. Our presence undergirds the Academy’s mission and propels the institution forward.

“The work that we do here determines not only who will walk the illustrious halls of BrightStar Academy, the nation’s leading voice in academia, but it also ensures that graduates of our academy secure the best and most privileged positions in every sphere of society–arts and entertainment, religion, education, government, media, business, and family.”

The mission, though wildly verbose, sounded innocent enough at the time. As an alumni of the co-ed BrightStar Academy, I jumped at the exclusive invitation to help advance the school’s mission. I barely noticed the absence of men in the room. Or the absence of varied skin colors and cultures. A marked difference from my experience as a BrightStar student where men and women from all backgrounds gathered to teach and learn. But things change, right? People change. Should I have noticed or cared that everyone in the solarium looked somewhat like me? Beige beauties with no phenotypic allegiance to one race, culture, or ethnic group. I mean, it’s called The High Order of the Pecan Sandies for goodness sake. What did I expect?

“Tell us about yourself, Miss Monroe,” Margo prompted as her French-manicured hands smoothed an invisible wrinkle on the high-end skirt hugging her barely-there curves.

I stood up and before I could utter a word, a nasally, almost baritone voice squealed, “Oh, gawd, she’s leaking!” I looked around, confused, trying to spot “The Leaker,” though I had no clue what that meant, when I noticed that all horrified eyes were on me.

Margo stepped down from her podium and moved swiftly toward me. She towered over me and bent down to look me in the eye. “You’re a bleeder,” she declared through clenched teeth, her dazzling perma-smile now dark and snarled with disdain. “And you need to leave. Now.”

“What?” I asked, bewildered, looking around the room for help. “What’s a bleeder? And why must I leave?”

“You have a uterus,” She spat, as if that was supposed to clear things up.

“What? Yes. Of course. What is happening?” Tears pooled in my eyes and I had no idea why. Margo pointed to my chair where a pool of crimson blood rubied the light peach fabric. My face reddened, probably as deeply as the blood stain on the chair. My uterine fibroid–I call it Fibby–won again. The two carefully positioned layers of super absorbent sanitary napkins placed on top of equally absorbent adult incontinence underwear and covered by another pair of adult pull-ups were no match for Fibby’s mighty menstrual misfeasance.

“I am so sorry,” I sputtered, shame flushing my face. “This is so embarrassing.” I looked around for something to cover the “crime,” feeling much like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when they realized they were naked–totally exposed and uncovered.

“I have a uterine fibroid that causes me to bleed heavily during my periods,” I blathered. “I take precautions and make plans to avoid situations like this, but I don’t always win the battles. You know how it is.”

“No. We don’t,” said someone sharply from the far corner of the room.

“Again, I’m so very sorry,” I continued. “I promise to pay for the chair. How much do I owe you?” I reached for my purse to grab my wallet.

Margo sighed deeply and looked at me with pity. “I am sorry Catalina, but you need to leave immediately, dear. You no longer meet the qualifications to join The High Order of the Pecan Sandies,” she said again with less steel and more sugar.

“What? Why?” I looked around at the other ladies for answers, maybe even a little support, but their heads dipped low and their eyes averted my gaze.

Margo gently grasped my hands. “ We like you, Cat. We really do. But the High Order of the Pecan Sandies is an exclusive society within academia with a specific vision for the world. And our group is composed of people like us. And only us.”

Normal people would have left the room at this point. Embarrassed by the bloody mess and mystified by the swiftly dimming light of this so-called enlightened group. But me being me, I stayed, bloodied and all, demanding an explanation for this sudden snub.

“You look like us on the outside,” said Margo carefully. “Pleasing to the eye, ethnically blended. You’re smart and accomplished. But, it’s what’s inside that counts. And just like your ethnicity is indistinguishable on the outside, we want your insides to be equally indistinguishable, meaning that we’re looking for sexless individuals to join our tribe.”

Now, I was really befuddled. I have never had sex in my life, but I wasn’t going to tell them that. And besides what in the wildly wicked world did any of that have to do with advancing the mission of BrightStar Academy? Margo perceived my bewilderment.

“I’m not referring to sexual activity, Cat. I’m referring to your biology. We’re looking for people with no distinguishable sexual traits inside, meaning no uteri for female-born individuals and no prostates or testicles for male-born individuals. In the same way that you can look at all of us and not identify our race, culture, or ethnicity, you also cannot ascertain our biological sexes. We are a group of individuals who reject the limitations of biology and together we aim to create a world devoid of both man-made social constructs and biological realities that have pummeled humanity to a pulp for millenia.”

I looked at the cadre of women before me, my mouth slackjaw. “I still don’t understand,” I muttered after a moment of silence. “You’re all clearly women.” A deafening silence filled the solarium and felt weighty and oppressive.

“No one in this room, but you, apparently, was born female,” Margo asserted. I smiled slightly waiting for the punchline to the joke or the completion of the thought. Margo remained silent. I looked around the room again, peering into each face in search of masculine jawlines, scanning necks for Adam’s apples, assessing shoulders for broadness, and checking hips for curvelessness. Still, I only saw before me a roomful of women. I looked into Margo’s eyes, again, waiting for her mask to drop, for the hazing to cease, to finally be let in on the real truth, the real secret. To be welcomed to the club. But she said nothing.

“Well, how did I get mixed up in all of this?” I whimpered, too perplexed to put up a fight.

“That remains to be determined,” Margo said sternly as her eyes shot daggers across the room at a fellow Sandie. “We thought you were one of us. You’re middle-aged, beige, no kids. I suppose it was just assumed that–.”

“That, what? That I was not an unaltered, intact woman?”

“Oh, hush. Unaltered. Intact. Your language is atrocious. You’re not a dog are you? It takes more than a hysterectomy to become a Pecan Sandie. Besides, gender-based language is so 2020s. It’s 2038 now. We’ve shed limiting labels that fail to represent our true selves. The High Order of the Pecan Sandies has succeeded in destroying the socially constructed labels like race and gender that have historically entangled humanity in webs of destruction. We’ve not only succeeded in eliminating the labels, we’ve managed to alter the genetic makeup of humanity so that most people born into the earth to unaltered people, as you’ve put it, will look like you and me. No differences, no dilemmas.”

I shuddered at the implications of Margo’s words. And swallowed the urge to point out that The High Order of Pecan Sandies had managed to exchange gender-based language for cookie-based labels. A cloud blocked the sun and the light in the solarium dimmed.

“And now, you’re targeting biological sex with the goal of eliminating differences between males and females from a biological basis? For the greater good?” I asked guardedly.

“Now you’re beginning to see the light,” purred Margo as a shadow crossed her face.

“I do indeed,” I surmised as I snatched my purse off the chair. “I see that the BrightStar Academy that I attended and loved is being undermined, not by academia, but by macadamias. You all are completely nuts!”

The Pecan Sandies stood to their feet to prepare to physically defend themselves, but I posed no threat to them.

“How you and the rest of the Pecan Sandies choose to live your lives is your business,” I huffed. “You’ll never be accountable to me for that, but to hide in the underbellies of academic institutions all over the world to try and covertly force your cardboard cut out, monochromatic, ungendered, unisex version of humanity on unsuspecting people is diabolical. Who do you think you are?”

“We are The High Order of the Pecan Sandies,” Margo said firmly, but not impolitely, as she guided me toward the solarium’s door. “We mold darkened, trauma-blistered minds enslaved by the world’s new and old “-isms” into sharp and nimble machines capable of shepherding tired and weary people into the rest they crave, the freedom they deserve, and the acceptance they need to thrive.

“We run the world. Every song our carefully cultivated artists sing, every novel an author writes, every lesson an educator teaches, every sermon a preacher preaches, every policy a politician imposes, every secret a reporter exposes, every business an entrepreneur creates, and every family that individuals make serves one thing only: Us.”

My lunch lurched upwards from my stomach into my esophagus. I instinctively covered my mouth with my hand to avoid a different kind of “leak.” Margo had led me outside of the solarium at this point and I stood there looking at her statuesque figure. I still saw no trace of maleness in her, but the light that enshrined her earlier had shadowed.

Before I had a chance to self-edit, second-guess or flat out stop myself, these words welled up in my heart and tumbled out of my mouth, “It is the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Good Shepherd. And He says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Margo threw her head back and laughed raucously. “Christianity has been used throughout the ages to champion nearly every toxic “-ism” and phobia you can name,” she spat. “White supremacy, racism, slavery, segregation, colonialism and cultural suppression, sexism and gender inequality, homophobia and LGBTQ+ exclusion, religious intolerance and exclusivity, religious trauma and guilt all have their roots in Christian worldviews.”

That’s not true, whispered a still, small voice inside of me. I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

Margo continued: “Everyone knows that Jesus Christ is the only one who actually practiced what He preached. All of His followers are hypocrites–none of them can live up to His standards. Not one!

“That’s why we at BrightStar Academy along with all the other credible universities have removed Jesus’ call to truth and light from our university mottos and missions and replaced it with a search for truth and light that is accessible to us all.

“Our universities can now be places where we can learn to be our truest selves, not the propped up, trying-to-be-perfect versions of humanity that label every person a dirty sinner in need of salvation. It’s usually the so-called saviors that prove to be the biggest sinners of all anyway.

That’s not true, whispered the still, small voice again. God is light. In Him there is no darkness at all.

“Don’t you EVER look down your nose at me, Catalina Monroe. I am the closest thing to God you will ever meet. The work of the High Order of Pecan Sandies will continue to change the wayward course of humanity and lead humanity into a greater tomorrow–one where we are all treasured for the value we bring to the table. A glorious meritocracy. Get out of here! We have no need of you or your judgey Jesus.” And with that, Margo slammed the door in my face and glass shattered everywhere.

I never heard from Margo or The High Order of the Pecan Sandies again. From that day forward, I haven’t looked at light, truth, or pecan sandie cookies in the same ways. I have learned that in the world that I live in, light refracts, truth bends, and cookies crumble. But there is a better world, a more just society right beyond what my eyes can see where light has no shadows, truth never wavers, and cookies stay sweet.

Can you believe that my stomach still lurches at the thought of eating pecan sandie cookies? For now, my cookie jar is filled with snickerdoodles and sugar cookies, brownies and Oreos–even white chocolate macadamia nut cookies and peanut butter blossoms. Maybe I’ll eat a pecan sandie cookie again at some point, but for now, I simply can’t. And that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.