Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (9 page)

Kate had respected Jane for not letting herself be stuck in someone else’s image of her, but recognized instead that her very Being, white and female and descended from slave owners though it was, might be a note of freedom. And the Women’s Movement, emerging later, which uncovered and named the camouflaged enslavement at the root of white women’s lives, had proved her right. One’s struggle against oppression is meaningless, she had known, unless it is connected to the oppression of others.

Kate was exhausted by the time Armando’s song was completed. She wanted only to sleep. Armando turned to Cosmi and asked him to bring her a special medicine. He explained to Kate, as Cosmi approached with a pitcher full of an earth-colored liquid, that this medicine, Bobinsana, would help her have lucid dreams. And in her lucid dream tonight, she would be able to talk in the right way to her ancestor.

You will not have fear, he said. You will not have guilt. You will be able to state clearly your love of him but also your need to be free.

The hard work will be, he added gravely, letting go of your need not to be free. Because you see, even though today everybody talks about ancestors in a somewhat lofty way—ancestor this, ancestor that—they are actually very much like one’s siblings. He laughed. Some of them need to be negotiated.

When the Spaniards came they made a game of slicing our people in two. We’d never seen a sword, you know. And they must have thought killing us in this way was entertaining. They fed our babies to their dogs. What they did to women is perhaps better unsaid. We are left with the record and the consequences of this behavior in our own bodies and psyches, and we must work with it. Not because it is Spanish behavior, no. Because it is human behavior. And we too are humans.

It will never work to think we are exempt from madness. I think you will be surprised to learn what it is this ancestor wants to tell you. He merely hooked you with that stuff about vanity. And why? Because he knows you are vain. Vanity interests you. But there is more to the story, I can assure you.

Kate was so sleepy by now that she staggered. Lalika stepped forward and placed an arm around her waist. The woman who always sat next to Lalika in circle, who was actually called Missy, came up to support her on the other side. In this odd threesome they tottered along the path, through the forest and toward Kate’s tiny hut.

Mistress Kate,
he said,
you can have no idea how long it takes to die. Even if it is all over in an instant. Time is relative, and you really understand it when you’re dying.

In the dream they were in the countryside, a countryside that showed no signs of modernity. Kate was standing on a road, a rough dirt road, quite narrow, and he was sitting beside it, not on the ground, but suspended in the air. His bloody gums, which had always seemed to lunge toward her out of his mouth, were now barely visible, though flashes of a ragged redness revealed nothing had changed. He didn’t seem to be showing her his wound. But was intent, instead, on telling her something he knew.

Why am I Mistress Kate?
she asked primly.

He shrugged.
You are not a slave. You are wearing shoes.

Oh,
she said, looking down at herself. It was true; on her feet were Birkenstock sandals. And she was wearing a frilly white dress.

Here’s a parasol,
he said, handing her an acorn.

She laughed because there was a parasol on its top. Every acorn was shaped that way; to protect itself from the rain. Rain rot.

My death took several lifetimes,
he said.
During which I
felt
every moment of my life in which I could have been better.
Horrible.
And yet, I was shot through the heart. Killed instantly, they said. They hated I’d been killed instantly, they’d hoped to have some fun with me.

By “they” do you mean . . . ?

Night riders,
he said.

Even though she knew she was dreaming, and could see her dreaming body lying under the mosquito net on her narrow bed, Kate felt herself draw back.

It is not what you think,
he said. He paused.
Rather, it is exactly what you think. Yes, there were centuries of terrorism, and this was a common incident. The nigger running, the white fiends chasing. The sound of the dogs. They were curiously inept at creating entertainment for themselves that didn’t center around us. I imagine this has not changed.

Aw, naw, you shot ’im through the heart. One of them said this, as they stood looking down at me. And you know what, so disappointed was he to be robbed of the good time he’d looked forward to, of torturing me, that he turned on the man who shot me and hit him. Right there, as I was dying, they began to fight.

This is what I want you to remember, he said. Not how painful having my teeth pulled out must have been.

Kate shook her head.

I don’t understand,
she said.

We are very old, our people. Not many could have suffered as we have and survived. We have had many lifetimes as human beings to learn of the many, many ways we do not wish to be.

But we are human,
she said,
and therefore we already are every way there is.

That’s true,
he said,
but there is still a bit of room for choice. Which is why it is worthwhile to remain in contact with your ancestors.

They were now walking on the same road, side by side. A pale, full moon was setting.

Did you realize ancestors have jobs?
he asked.

I bet the slaves who died didn’t want to hear that!
she said, and laughed.

He smiled, and a bit of blood dropped in the red dirt.

Do you think when a tree dies all its work is finished? Of course not. It then has the work of decomposing, of becoming soil in which other trees grow. It is very careful to do this, left to itself, and not hauled off to a lumberyard. If it is hauled off to a lumberyard and if nothing is left to decompose and nurture the young trees coming up . . . Disaster!

She thought of clear-cutting. Clear-cuts she had seen along the Klamath River in northern California. The landscape that had been so lush and powerful was left bare and desolate; the young trees coming up had no shade to protect them from the blistering sun that baked the earth to ash. They were as brittle as matchsticks and unable to grow tall. They would never know the grandeur of the parents and grandparents who preceded them. How would they ever guess what their true nature was?

Our job is to remind you of ways you do not want to be,
he said.
Sometimes I think this message is the hardest to get across because it flies in the face of our need to have revenge. There is also the question of loyalty to the dead. We feel we need to avenge, to make right. To heal by settling a score. Healing cannot be done by settling a score.

As he said this, he laughed, as if the very thought were absurd. Blood flew all over the place, some of it flecking her white dress. But in just that moment her dress changed into a buffalo skin and the flecks of blood didn’t show. Hmmm . . . she thought. Looking down, for just a moment, there was a hoof.

What’s your name, by the way?
she asked.

Remus,
he said.

Remus? Like Uncle Remus? You’re kidding.

No,
he said.
I know that name is considered a joke by some people. It was a common name for slaves. The masters liked it because it made us seem ridiculous.

The original Remus was suckled by wolves,
she said,
and with his brother Romulus, he founded the city of Rome.

Really,
he said.
I’ve never been to Rome.

Where have you been?
she asked.

Only here,
he said.
Only with you.

They were now passing an enormous field of corn. Remus was barefoot and wearing ragged gray cotton trousers. Kate walked behind him looking at his footprints. Each time he lifted his foot one print would fill with water and the other with blood.

In the one that filled with water she saw her own face.

They sat abruptly at the side of road near the cornfield. Kate found an ear of corn in her hand. She began to strip its husk.

I used to have to plant, harvest, shuck, and shell a field of corn this size every year,
said Remus.
After shucking so much corn it took the rest of winter for the palms of my hands to heal, to grow new skin. Consequently, I hate corn.

No, you don’t,
said Kate.
You hate having been forced to deal with it. Corn is innocent. It had nothing to do with enslaving you.

Remus looked down at her.
Who’s the ancestor here?
he joked.

We living have jobs too,
she said, beginning to pull the silver hairs from the gleaming pearl-colored ear of corn in her hands. It did not surprise her that as she did this, the ear of corn became hard as a rock. Or rather, hard as dried corn. She knew immediately what she was to do.

She took the hand of Remus, a hand as dry and scratchy as the bark of a tree.

Here,
she said, handing him the ear of corn.
Eat this.

Remus made a face.

Go ahead,
she insisted.
Eat it.

He bared his gums.

Eat it, Remus.

I have nothing to eat it with,
he said,
even if I wanted to.

Oh ye of little faith,
she said.
Just see what you can do with it, to please me.

It’s so hard,
he said, taking the ear of corn.

Yes, it is,
she said.

She watched as Remus, only to please her, put the hard, dry ear of corn into his mouth. Blood smearing it as he did so, he clamped down, as if taking a bite. The kernels of corn immediately flew off the cob and attached themselves to his gums.

Remus,
said Kate, beginning to chuckle at the astonished look on his face,
you now have a full set of teeth.

He ran this way and that, looking for a mirror.

Here,
she called after him.
Here is the mirror. Look in my eyes.

When Remus looked into her eyes and saw himself, his beaming new smile, his happiness seemed to make him weak. He stumbled and began falling forward, into her. She felt the heaviness of him, his hard head, his broad shoulders, even his scratchy hands, passing into her chest. They seemed to be falling into a place just coming into view, far below them. She strained to see where they would fall, fearful they would be hurt. Though he was now inside her, she no longer felt his weight. And suddenly she saw clearly where they would land; it was her bed. Where she saw herself lying peacefully, sound asleep.

The Longer Yolo Kicked Back

The longer Yolo kicked back in his lounger on the beach, just in front of the pale beige resort hotel, the more he began to feel himself stuck on the surface of a façade. What was behind this tranquil site in which he had been so disturbed? he wondered. Each morning he rose, donned his trim green bathing trunks, took up his book—delighted to find himself enjoying a tale about goddesses and the tenacity of an ancient Goddess religion—and plopped himself, with a jug of lemonade at his elbow, in the shade of his beach umbrella. He could not forget the face of the young man with whose body he’d sat, however. He found his mind drifting as he gazed toward da locals’ section of the beach. He realized he knew almost nothing about Hawaii, beyond the reading he’d done before he came, whose sole intention had been to make of him a contented tourist; there was no way of guessing the beginning of the life whose ending he had seen. Thinking about it eventually forced him from his seat by the sleep-inducing sea, and into the bright red car he’d rented shortly after he arrived.

His car was red because he loved red. He was a Taurus, and every other Taurus he knew also loved red and owned a red car. In fact, he was often comforted while driving to see so many of his kindred charging down the road. Like bulls they liked to take off with a kick of the back wheels and to storm the highway as if the curtain of landscape glimpsed through the windshield were the cape of the matador.

Where was he going, though? He had no idea. Once away from the hotel the place didn’t even look like Hawaii. There were a lot of hardened lava flows that made the air hot and stifling, and after he’d passed those he came to yellowing grassy fields that looked like they’d been burned. A few minutes later he entered a forest of iron trees that resembled scraggly pines. Seconds later he was passing a cattle ranch. Patches of green grass looked like verdant postage stamps and the minuscule watering holes glinted in the sun. Next the sun disappeared and he found himself on top of a hill and in a mist so dense it almost turned into rain.

As his car dipped down into a small, breezy village, Yolo found himself bringing up the rear of a long line of slowly moving vehicles. The ones farthest from him were turning off the road. When he drew abreast of the turn he found himself at a small green church that looked like a child’s drawing of one. Some of the cars turning to park in the church parking lot had their lights on. He realized he had come upon a funeral procession.

Driving very slowly he gazed at the gathering of people getting out of their cars. He recognized Jerry and the brother of the young man who had died. Out of surprise and respect, he slowed the car even more and pulled over to the side of the road.