by Susana Aikin
“You don’t understand! They’re trying to put some weird-ass poultice on her wound,” Julia shrieks.
“A poultice?” Marion examines my gash and then looks at Delia.
Delia smiles over her cane. “It’s only thistles. In our tradition they’re healing herbs and spiritual protectors. Blessed thistle is a liver tonic, good for infections. It’s given to breast-feeding mothers. What harm can it do?”
“Anna, are you all right with this? Do you consent to having this herb put on your wound?” Marion’s eyes are soft, loving. Her skin is cool next to mine, she smells of ferns and moist plants. I want her to embrace me, to pull me to her bosom, to lull me into sleep.
I can hardly move but I manage to nod. “It’s fine.”
Julia screams. “She’s feverish! What does she know?”
“Julia, stop this. Go get water. Now.” Marion doesn’t even raise her voice.
Julia shrinks and stands for a moment, hanging her head. “You know, this is also your fault. You didn’t bring any food for us. She hasn’t eaten anything the whole day.”
Marion turns to her again and stares her down, but gently, with the patience a good mother uses with an unruly child. “Please, Julia, get us water.”
“And Advil,” I manage to say.
Julia clicks her tongue and leaves the room.
“Thank you, Marion.” Delia takes the mortar from Constantine’s hands and holds it in her own for a minute, closing her eyes and moving her lips as if in silent prayer. Then she takes the spoon and dips it into the poultice. Meantime, Marion and Constantine lift me from the sofa into a seated position and place my leg on the coffee table once again. Delia sits in the armchair and reaches over with a spoonful of green greasy paste. A shudder of trepidation gets hold of me as the spoon approaches my thigh. But Marion is holding my hand and I feel no pain as the cool spoon spreads the goo over the gash. Just a little heat around the edges of the cut.
“Good.” Delia says. “Now you need to leave. Get some fresh air while I seal this room again. Can you get up?”
“I can walk her out and sit her under the willow,” Constantine says.
“All right, but make it close to the house. The storm will be here any moment.”
Marion squeezes my hands. “Can you go out with Constantine while I change?” I nod. I’ve taken to just nodding, I realize I don’t need to talk, I don’t need to initiate movement, everything is being done for me. It feels like being a small child again, carefree, even in the face of complications.
Constantine offers a hand and together with Marion they pull me up from the sofa. My head starts pounding again as they walk me to the door. The moment we cross the threshold, I feel disoriented.
Marion says, “I’ll be back immediately,” and she hurries down the corridor.
Constantine threads his arm through mine and holds my elbow with a strong hand as we cross the French doors that lead to the garden. His clothes, his hair, everything on him and around him reeks of burned sage, making me nauseous, as if my stomach would turn inside out in an instant. We walk quickly, faster than I can handle at this point, and I sense how much effort he is putting into pulling me along. My body feels like a dead weight.
“Sorry to rush you, but we’re running so late,” he says. “And me, letting Delia down with all my petty mistakes. Sometimes I don’t know how she puts up with me.” He’s talking to himself while he pulls me along. “You see, no one understands Delia’s work. I bleed when people treat her like a phony elder. Like she’s going to pull out a tarot deck or give you a love potion made out of candy. Delia is so much more. She works with people, she helps them overcome their heartaches. Whatever’s blocking their lives. She’s a powerful healer. She’s a liberator of souls. If people just knew.” He rattles on, but I’m having a more and more difficult time focusing on his words.
The air is oppressive as we step out of the house, as if the barometric pressure has dropped and is weighing down on my diaphragm like lead, stuffing my lungs with an unbearable feeling of cotton wool. I look up for a brief moment and see the mass of clouds above, like a whorl of gray and yellow, a swirling, angry smog. Its raging blaze presses on my eyeballs, hammering streaks of pain into the middle of my brain. I am dragging my leg now, and I can feel the bandage Marion tied around my thigh beginning to get loose, slipping off. We walk over the terraced area, and when we reach the scorched patch of lawn I want to ask Constantine to stop and let me catch my breath, but I can’t inhale, I can’t open my throat to talk. My knees bend and then he turns to look at me, while I slide down over the charred grass. He towers over me as I fall into a heap.
“Delia! Delia! I think she’s being claimed,” I hear him say, before his voice turns into a strange hum streaming out of his lips. My ears are about to explode as if I were being pushed down through vertical miles of water. My lungs are paralyzed. Constantine holds my face with both hands while he accommodates my head on the ground. I look into his eyes. Into the pupil of his strange, strabismic eye, which roams around for a while until it locks with mine. His left eye into my right. It feels like a painless insect sting. A quick, sharp perforation of a membrane, my membrane, a taut sheath extending around my body and hemming it in like a drop of water. Constantine is also surrounded by his own membrane. It connects with mine through the tiny hole that has just been pricked. Sweet air streams through the puncture, and I suck at it with desperate greed until it fills my head and my throat. I realize I’m breathing through Constantine—every time his membrane expands, mine receives a delayed pulse of luscious air. Constantine is also changing. His ugly, pointy face is transforming into the semblance of a horse. A handsome, sorrel horse with moist chestnut eyes and a long blaze reaching down to his wide nostrils. The horse snorts and turns, canters away, while I sink into the parched ground that is opening around me like a crater, in jagged movements like spastic waves. I fall through the crack and under the surface, the soil sifts over my body as if it were coarse, heavy flour. My hands grasp at the shriveled lattice of roots that emerge around me as I slip down the tunnel, to no avail. I tumble into a cool, blind space. Now, as I lie on the soft bed of soil, I know I am underneath the house, I can feel it pounding above me with the echo of every sound. Delia’s unsteady steps as the South Wind pushes her out the door in Father’s studio, Marion’s soft silk dress sliding down her body, Julia placing gleaming plastic bottles of cold water on the hall floor with a thud. The house is over and around me. Its base surface stretches over the periphery of my body, grows out of it at some level, inseparable, like the shell of a huge snail. I am still connected with the large breathing membrane, although it is not a membrane anymore, but a breast. A huge breast of earth with a thick pointed nipple that I suck at with all my strength for a few drops of air. Delia’s dark, laughing eyes spill over me, bathing me in tender mirth, and I realize it is she who is feeding me from her breast, a mammoth black Earth Mother towering high against the sky.
But then, as I look again, it’s not Delia, it’s Mother holding her soft creamy breast over me, cooing, while she nudges her pink nipple into my mouth and rocks me into her bosom. I begin to breathe.
CHAPTER 20
Fat raindrops fall on my face. I feel them tumbling over my cheeks and into my eye sockets. One or two roll into my parted lips and I savor that most sweet substance on Earth. Water. Its cooling tang hallows the taste buds in my tongue, infuses the whole cavity of my mouth with grace. Life is back. My pain, I realize, is gone. And I feel fresh, renewed, as if I had slept through a long, comforting night.
I blink my eyes open against a sky of lead streaked with feeble veins of lightning. Thunder follows like dissonant drums, a cacophony of grumbling still reluctant to release the avalanche from its overdue belly. Just one fat drop at a time. For now.
Around me kneel Marion and Constantine. Delia stands at my feet, leaning on her staff and looking down. Her eyes have a new expression, one I have not seen before. Although set in my direction, they look
beyond me, spellbound, tiny sparks flaring up now and then on their dark surface as if she were reading the meaning of a strange revelation playing itself in front of her.
“Anna, are you all right?” Marion holds my wrists. “Oh, I shouldn’t have left you for a second!” Her velvet brown irises quiver with unease, on the verge of tears.
“I’m fine. I’d like to drink water, though.” My voice is back. My lungs are open. I push myself up on my elbows, but Marion presses me gently back down. “Don’t move just yet.”
Julia bounds toward us with two large bottles of water in her hands. “What happened?” she shrieks when she sees me on the ground. “Did he do anything to you?” she says, pointing at Constantine. She drops the water bottles and rushes to me with an angry, flushed face. Constantine stands up with a pained look and joins Delia.
“No, no,” I say, “he only tried to help me.”
“Julia, stop your hysteria! How could you even suggest anything like that?” Marion says. “Anna came down with convulsions. I didn’t know she was in such a bad state. Poor thing.”
“Convulsions? Who goes into convulsions without being epileptic? I knew we had to take her to the hospital!” Julia turns to Delia. “I’ve known you for a very long time, but bullshit aside, that thing you put on her wound . . .”
“Can I please have water?” I say, sitting up.
“Fine, drink,” Julia says, uncapping one of the water bottles. “But you’re coming with me to the emergency room right after.” She holds the bottle to my lips and I circle my hands around its frosty body and swing it upwards with all the eagerness my thirst can muster. The water gushes down my throat and into my stomach as if into a black hole. I can feel the unbearable craving down to my very cells as I suck it in.
“Hey, take it easy!” Julia pulls the bottle away, and then turns to Delia. “I’m taking her, no matter what you say, no matter what any of you say.”
“Julia! Julia, look at me.” Delia nails her with gentle but firm eyes. “You can take her to the hospital if you like. It’s all fine. But you have seen people being mounted by Orishas before. In all of our masses Alina brought you to. This is just what happened. After a deep cleansing, the Orishas can take you up for a few minutes. They honor the brave of spirit with gifts of vision. That’s all. It might have been you, had you done the work. But you quit midway, you missed out on the best part. And that’s why you’re feeling so jittery, so distraught.” She’s smiling again, Delia, curling those thin scimitar lips behind which she seems to be trembling with irresistible mirth.
For a moment, I think Julia will continue to fight; she’s not one to go down without being clubbed to the ground. But Julia just looks at Delia meekly, even sheepishly, as if the reproach had hit the right chord. Then, I see her lowering her eyes in dejection. “Sorry, Constantine, I didn’t really mean what I said,” she starts, but Constantine cuts in swiftly, “Don’t worry, I’ve had worse things said to me.”
I drift away from their exchange. I’m aware of a sudden silence in the air. Nothing moves, the small sounds of the garden have ebbed into stillness. The atmosphere around us has become a dark shade of metallic gray, like hematite. It galvanizes the air with scintillating tension. Now everyone’s eyes are focused on me, looking at me from a sort of distance. As if they were seeing something ghostly. Even Julia’s.
“What?” I begin to say.
“It’s here,” Delia answers.
Then it breaks open, the sky above. A bolt of lightning like a jagged javelin rips the heavy gray belly, followed by a deafening crack of thunder. Rain begins to fall, hard, fast, pelting around us like bullets, soaking us in seconds.
“We’d better get you inside.” Marion scrambles to her feet and helps me up. Julia gathers the water bottles. As we run to the house, the water is already forming rivers along the ground beneath our feet, and the dry, caked earth is beginning to dissolve into mud. I turn back to see Constantine pulling Delia’s arm while she walks against the rain, her face turned upward, shielding her eyes with one hand. Once they reach the house, we close the French door behind us, as the wind picks up, driving the rain hard against the façade, strumming it in gusts against the windowpanes. Marion locks the door. We stand looking out at the rain splattering around the house, mesmerized by its knifelike patter playing upon the surface of the land as if it were a drum. The wind whistles around the house, down the chimneys, rattling windows and doors. Water falls in thick vertical sheets over the swimming pool and the patio, drowning the garden, whipping the long branches of the willow tree.
“Hell!” Julia says. “To think of all the drought we’ve had this year! I haven’t seen a storm like this in a long time.”
“It feels like a monsoon,” Marion says.
I’m sodden to the core. We all are. Amazing, how in just minutes we’ve been drenched by what felt like bucketfuls being thrown from the top of the world. My thin cotton shirt sticks to my body and rivulets of water drip down my legs. We’re all standing in puddles.
“Let’s go to the library and light a fire,” Marion says. “We can sit for a bit and dry ourselves while the storm abates. I found a bunch of old towels in the linen wardrobe.”
“Thank you, but Constantine and I still have to clear the altar,” Delia says. “We could use one last cup of coffee, though, now that we’ve come into water.” She says come into water as if she were saying come into money or riches. Of course, she means drinking water. But right now, coffee sounds good and the kitchen even better. It’s probably the coziest room in the house, putting aside the paraffin smog created by hours of candles burning. But my teeth are chattering. All of a sudden I’m overcome by chills.
“I’ll make the coffee.” Julia looks at Marion. “You take care of Anna.”
We start trooping toward the kitchen when a loud cracking sound followed by a blasting explosion of crashing glass deafens us. We turn around, bewildered. The large French window has been smashed and shards of glass shoot around the room like shrapnel. Delia takes a step in front of me, opens her arms as if to shield me, while everyone else huddles behind. Jagged fragments of glass fall over furniture and slide along the ceramic floor with screeching sounds, while the wind howls into the room and jangles the French door before it splits and streams out of the multiple broken lattice panels. Then the awning crashes down outside, its soaked green tarpaulin sprawled over the terrace along with the mangled aluminum rods. The long, heavy crank handle is spiked through the French door that is now hanging off its upper hinge.
“Holy shit!” I say, looking over Delia’s shoulder. We all stand frozen, just feet away from the crashed glass.
Then Marion says, “Who was dumb enough to leave the crank handle hanging?”
And Julia and I answer in unison, “One of these days that bloody piece of a botched rod is going to smash up the whole window!” before the three of us burst into laughter.
Delia and Constantine turn to us in surprise. “What’s so funny?” “Just that we must’ve heard our father say this every day of every summer of our lives,” Julia says, still in splits.
“There you go.” Delia smiles, looking toward the window. “His prediction finally became true. Although I would’ve thought the lightning was more to blame than the handle.”
* * *
The rain has quieted down. It falls in soft pitter-patter rhythms along the eaves surrounding the house. The sky is clearing up, the dull ashen layers of clouds are being torn into long strips, revealing the dark red gleam of a blood-orange sun that sinks behind the line of mountains.
I look back at the large latticed window, its panels ragged with broken glass, the door torn and hanging like a huge open mouth gaping out toward the violet dusk that now descends over the garden. Who would have thought that the awning’s cracked handle, a humble piece of metal, rusty and forgotten in an abandoned garden, would have become the unsuspecting implement in the opening of the house’s mouth? I search for Delia’s eyes. I want to plunge into those dar
k layers of scintillating wisdom and know that she is thinking the same thing. Delia returns my gaze and for a brief moment I see a smiling sparkle of kindred understanding, but then she locks her eyes back into their old hermetic surface, those obscure mirrors that bounce back my reflection.
“The limpieza has been accomplished,” she says solemnly. “It has been a good one. A very good one.” Behind her, a crescent moon just a day away from full newness rises over the night sky.
CHAPTER 21
“You can’t leave without telling me more about what just happened to me!” I’m aware of the despair underlying my voice. I’ve asked twice already, but Delia is busy reorganizing the contents of her big brown bag and doesn’t even look at me.
We’re in the kitchen. Constantine and Delia are gathering their things before they leave. No one has made coffee. It seems that some of the house’s electric circuits have come down in the storm, and the electric range is out of order, along with multiple lights in the house. Julia has gone, flashlight in hand, to figure out the circuit breaker.
I address Delia once more across the table. “What is this being claimed by the Orishas? Who are the Orishas?”
But Delia, who’s now bending over her small suitcase, is adamant in her silence. I stare at her with beseeching eyes. A part of my brain is still trying to hold on to the images of the vision I had out in the garden, but I can already feel them slipping away like sand through open fingers. As dream sequences that fade, once the dreamer crosses over to reality upon waking. Losing the concrete imagery of the experience doesn’t take away the astounding awe I feel has been opened inside me, like a magical eye I never knew I had, which holds me spellbound to the cryptic messages contained in my vision. It’s the codes to interpret these messages that I’m hanging on to by the fingernails; they’re also slipping away, swallowed up into the quicksands of the coarse upper layers of my brain. Soon, only the memory of a sacred fog will remain.
