by Tracy Barone
“What company? Tonight?” Cheri instinctively slides the birthday card back into the envelope.
“Next week. I’m waiting on the exact date. We finally got that Sedona prick to let the shaman come here for a few days. You wouldn’t believe the negotiations with customs and immigration. They’re treating him like he’s a terrorist because he’s brown-skinned; talk about racial profiling. I don’t know how he did it, but Bertrand got the U.S. consulate in Ecuador to help with documentation to verify he’s a tribal elder so he can bring in the yage.”
“Yage?”
“Plant medicine, DMT—aka ayahuasca. You know the footage we shot with Del Rio—you should really look at what I’ve done with it before he comes. Can you do that, please?” Cheri remembers that footage: initiates in the thrall of the hallucinogen, wailing, retching, the shaman walking among them making a high-pitched, keening sound like an aboriginal cantor.
“So, wait, is the shaman coming here to do a ceremony?”
“Well, I have to interview him again.” Michael shakes one of Cici’s packages. “More towels?”
“Is he coming alone or does he have an interpreter?”
“Yeah, they’re giving me the second-string interpreter. The main guy is staying in Sedona. Can you believe it? Everything is a fucking battle.”
“Okay, just let me know soon.” The last thing Cheri wants is more people she can’t communicate with in the house. Tripping on yage or not tripping. “Taya’s coming to town and I’m trying to plan my birthday.”
“You’ll know as soon as I know. And don’t worry, they’ll bunk in my office.” Cheri gives him a look: It’s okay for the shaman to stay there but not her mother?
“It’s work. And only for a few days,” Michael insists as she grabs the package away from him and holds it protectively.
“I told Taya we’re going to get together with her and her new guy; we were all going to do something for my birthday.”
“You said you didn’t want to do anything for your birthday. I took you at your word.”
“I said I didn’t want a party,” Cheri says measuredly. “Remember, I told you she’s dating that artist. Von something. He’s around your age—he was big in the seventies. He does nudes…”
“Sorry, darling, but sometimes we have to accommodate other people’s schedules. I know Mezzo America’s not your field, but I thought you’d appreciate meeting a Shuar medicine man. He’s the first to come to the States ever; some people would consider it a blessing. Can we talk about this later? I’m exhausted. I was just on my way upstairs to take a nap.” He’s almost out of the kitchen when he turns around.
“You had your meeting with the review committee this morning. How was it?”
“I kept my powder dry,” she says, relishing that the context is lost on him.
“I found a genius place for your birthday, CM,” Taya says. Cheri has answered her cell in the locker room at the gym after getting a few sets of weights in. The lady changing next to her is giving her a dirty look, which Cheri pointedly ignores. This isn’t a fucking yoga studio, Cheri wants to say.
“It’s an authentic country-and-western bar with a real mechanical bull. My old guy is in if your old guy is in.” Taya thinks all old guys will like each other, kind of like babies; just throw the oldies in Barcaloungers with bottles of whiskey and they’re happy.
“Don’t think that’s going to work,” Cheri says. “We have a shaman coming into town.”
“A shaman?”
“Michael’s got him staying with us for his film. Don’t ask me. But you can’t do anything that would embarrass him, he’s very into this.”
“Like I don’t know how to behave? I’ve hosted a fund-raiser for the Dalai Lama, and he’s a hell of a lot more important than a shaman. But it’s your birthday, so you get to decide the venue. Tell Michael to bring his camera. A shaman on a mechanical bull is too brilliant! He can call it Slammin’ with Shaman.”
The venue, Cheri learns in the morning, will be their house. The only day the shaman can come to Chicago is on her actual birthday and Cheri slides into acceptance. For the next few days, Michael is buzzing with shaman prep. The yage arrives in an envelope—add that to the list of misdemeanors. Michael is calling homeopaths for a root to ferment into a beer the Shuar men drink; cooking a vegetarian meal although nobody’s a vegetarian and Cheri is a carnivore who likes her steak blue. All she’s been hearing from HMS Bay is atonal whistling and rattling. The news headlines are more of the same: war looming; economy crashing; environment collapsing; priests molesting; and the president’s at his ranch in Texas taking a “nonworking” vacation. Deforestation in the Amazon—that’s a good subject to bring up with the shaman.
Cici’s packages continue to pour in daily. Her mother is extracting her pound of guilt by sending pounds of gifts. Cheri can’t resist opening the boxes from Dean and DeLuca. Cici always gets the best of the best, but she excels in all things pig. Half the boxes are filled with cured meats, including a whole leg of imported prosciutto di Parma, Cici’s homemade mozzarella, and torta di noce. Cheri stands in the kitchen eating slices of buttery-soft prosciutto. “The Shuar don’t eat pork! Get rid of all that,” Michael bleats as he walks through the kitchen carrying blankets and sheets to his office.
“I will not. It’s not like they keep kosher.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a religious thing or not, we can’t have pork in the house.”
“In whose rule book? They eat guinea pigs—they’re not going to pass out at the sight of prosciutto.”
“It’s a simple request—just pack it all up.”
“I’ll stash it in the extra fridge in the garage. Problem solved. We’ve had Muslims over for dinner and I didn’t clean out the refrigerator.”
“That’s because your mother hadn’t just sent us a passel of pig!”
“No, I’m certain we had bacon and those sausage patties you like in the freezer.” Michael’s starting to get his aneurysm look. “It’s delicious, want some?”
On the morning of Cheri’s birthday, she wakes up to find that Michael’s side of the bed is untouched. He’d cordoned off most of the downstairs with his party prep and must have fallen asleep in his office. She walks downstairs and finds a huge bouquet of tea roses that could only be from Cici and a plate of her favorite sprinkle doughnuts and fresh coffee awaiting her on the kitchen table. But this pales in comparison to what Michael has accomplished outside. He’s straightened and cleaned and had his way with the backyard. He rescued the kiva from the ignominy of the garage and he’s sectioned off an eating area with bamboo poles strewn with colorful paper lanterns. She walks into what is now a Zen garden; Michael’s collection of large crystals and minerals jut up from the grass, seemingly rising out of the earth; flowers bloom, citronella candles ward off stinging insects, Chinese lanterns sit on tree trunks. Michael has covered their old plastic table with batik fabric and he’s brought his speakers outside.
It all looks beautiful. She realizes how long it’s been since either of them made this kind of effort. She lingers for a moment, feeling wistful, then turns around to go back upstairs.
Cheri sits on the bed with her plate of doughnuts and Cici’s final box. Cheri knows this small box is part of a ritual. The handing down of a family idol that she doesn’t worship, at least not as her mother might want her to. This year’s offering is in gold paper with a white ribbon; Cheri tears it open unceremoniously to reveal a heart-shaped velvet box containing a heavy ruby ring. A virtuous woman is worth more than rubies. The proverb pops into Cheri’s head, but she’s never seen her mother wear this ring. The note, written in Cici’s elegant cursive, says: From my forty to your forty. Cheri tries to remember her mother at forty. She seemed a lot older then than Cheri is now, but in some ways much younger. Her mother lived such a protected, simple life. Cheri tries the ruby ring on her middle finger; it’s far too big and fancy for her, but it is beautiful. It’s a shame, she thinks as she returns it to its case
and puts it in her drawer, to keep something so precious in the dark.
Not to be forgotten, Sol has also left her a birthday gift. His will provided that Cheri would get all the keys to his patent castle when she turned forty. The fruit of Sol’s labor resides in Citibank Land, guarded by dark-suited denizens, quietly growing. She’s never touched her trust fund—she’s doesn’t even know exactly how much she’s got—and has no plans to do so now. Did Sol think that Cheri would become more like Cici, blithely using his money to wallpaper over the holes he’d made in her life? And to think it all comes from sugarcoating. She knows of a far better way to swallow the pill of forty.
She blasts the Ramones as she forages for a decent bra. Most of her undergarments are stretched out and crappy except for the Wonderbra she bought when she was all sexed up to make a baby. She puts earrings in her piercings and a stud in her nose. Eddie Norris said she looked like a bull in the ring. Eddie’s probably on a lake right now with his cop wife and four cop kids, on their summer vacation. Not like the time she and Eddie went camping and she convinced him to eat magic mushrooms and they laughed and had sex and marveled for hours over dead leaves that morphed into starfish. The image of Eddie Norris pinning her arms over her head while he slowly traced the indentation of her collarbone with his tongue flickers on and off in her mind like a lamp with a loose wire.
“Cheri! Cheri!” Michael’s standing in the doorway. “Can you turn that down? They’re here.” She lowers the volume on the CD player. “Sexy.” He nods approvingly at the Wonderbra and suddenly she realizes she’s got doughnut crumbs in her cleavage. “You might want to put something more on, though. Happy birthday,” he adds, already heading back down the stairs.
“Welcome,” Cheri says a few minutes later, extending her hand to the shaman. She’s red-lipped, studded, wearing a black dress. “Michael and I are honored to have you in our home.” The shaman is a short, slight man with skin the color and texture of beef jerky. His face is like a fine engraving, and his eyes are clear and bright; he could be a hundred years old or fifty. His hand is surprisingly large and rough and he talks in an indigenous language she’s never heard. She focuses on the sounds of his words, looks to see how they’re formed in his mouth—front to back? What about the tongue, teeth, jaw, and lips? These are the clues and classifiers she uses as a linguist, but even applying the little she knows of American Indian languages, she’s at a loss. The shaman keeps talking and the second-string translator, a young man with a thick black mustache and watery eyes, sums it all up as “‘Hello, my name is Ramon.’”
They sit in the garden at a table under an umbrella Cheri didn’t know existed. Michael’s beverage tastes like malted dirt, but they sip it while he talks about his film and his plans for interviewing Ramon again. The translator is lagging behind Michael significantly. Ramon’s attention seems to be focused on Cheri, to the point where it makes her uncomfortable. She smiles and renews her focus on Michael. When the translator finally stops, Ramon speaks and holds his abdomen. The translator looks at Cheri, then turns back to Michael.
“He says a grain grows inside of you; you must pay attention. No. Please, excuse…no, my mistake.” He addresses Cheri: “He says you are the one with emptiness inside. It is…inhospitable. This gives you hyperactivity, restlessness, and despair.” Cheri feels like she’s gone through a metal detector and been caught packing. She doesn’t know who or what to look at. There’s an awkward silence.
“Or,” the translator adds with a nervous laugh, “he is saying he is hungry and looks forward to your meal. The Chicago summer is hot, is it not?”
Taya arrives fifty minutes later, hair blown out, high-heeled, juggling her overflowing purse, bottles of champagne, presents, and, as promised, an old guy in cowboy boots whom she quickly introduces to everyone as Van. “Happy birthday! You look great,” she shouts at Cheri as Michael relieves Taya of her packages.
“I’m so sorry we’re late. It’s all my fault, of course. We had to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art for this Frank Gehry opening. Aren’t we all getting sick of Frank Gehry? He’s everywhere, with all his weird shapes and crazy angles.” Van gives her a cynical look. “He’s become a deconstructionist showman, you know I’m right. Van knew him early on; he was part of the Venice artist group in the sixties.”
“Everything was better in the sixties,” he mutters, “including me.”
“I’m with you there,” Michael says.
“Don’t listen to him,” Taya says to Cheri. “His work keeps getting better.” She gives Van’s hand a little squeeze. “You have to see his show, it’s absolutely brilliant.” This moment of tenderness is not lost on Cheri.
“What’s your poison, Van? I’ve got a whole bar set up.” As the men go outside, Taya lags behind with Cheri.
“Speaking of showmen, where is the shaman?”
“He’s in Michael’s office. He’ll be down in a moment. But, please, try to speak slowly. I’m not sure how much of anything he’s getting because his translator isn’t that quick off the draw.”
“I think you’re the one who needs a drink. Or three.” Taya puts her arm around Cheri’s waist. “Come on! Let’s get this birthday started!”
Outside the lanterns glow and world music plays. Michael and Van share a joint; Cheri watches the ember going back and forth like the point of a laser. She knows by his hand gestures that Michael is telling his story about the Museum of Sex, the dwarf, and Andy Warhol. He’d interviewed Warhol for Disco, Doughnuts, and Dogma. Van strokes his beard and seems amused. The champagne is dry, Ramon and the translator have emerged from HMS Bay, and Taya’s not yet said anything inappropriate. This is not such a bad little party, Cheri thinks. It’s actually turning out fine.
Everyone loves the food. “It goes well with lightning,” Michael says as a fork of electricity flashes across the sky, followed seconds later by a thunderclap. He’s served vegetables grilled, curried, and stewed with goat milk, along with a mixture of grains and dried fruit and lots of crusty bread and salad.
“I’d try ayahuasca,” Van says. “I’ve done plenty of peyote and shrooms, got some interesting paintings out of it. Does he work with frog venom? That shit’s supposed to be a hundred times stronger than morphine. Makes you puke your guts out for days.”
“You’re thinking of the Mayorunas. Different tribe, another part of the Amazon,” Michael says. “Medicine men like Ramon—they’re called uwishin in the Shuar tribe—they’ve performed thousands of ceremonies with the plant, or Mama. She takes you very deep into the psyche, even to the point of simulating death.”
“Like DMT,” Taya says. “Not for me, but in LA there’s always a market for anything mind-expanding. If the shaman wanted to leave the rain forest I’d be happy to connect him with people.” The translator, whose name is either Samit or Samil, smiles at Taya and then goes back to eating.
“Aren’t you going to translate what we’re saying?” Taya asks Samit. “I don’t want him to think we’re rude.”
“Ah, well. I am not really a translator, you see.”
“What do you mean? You know the uwishin dialect,” Michael says with some concern.
“This is true, but my knowledge of the language comes via taking care of their teeth. I am a dentist. I must travel often to their village. One must learn to communicate or there could be a big mistake.”
“You’re a dentist,” Michael says.
“Yes. I am considered to be very gentle.” Michael’s getting his aneurysm look. Taya leans in and whispers to Cheri:
“Let’s hope he’s a better dentist than a translator.”
“How much of this aren’t you getting? We’ve got a shoot tomorrow and it’s important that Ramon understand my questions.”
“I do my best,” Samit says, his round eyes getting rounder. Michael takes him aside for a moment. Ramon looks surprisingly unfazed, drinks his malted dirt.
Can’t this all wait until the morning, Cheri wants to shout. Michael’s hijacking the eve
ning and it pisses Cheri off. She needs to either drink a lot more or stop now. “Toast!” Taya says, tapping her glass with a spoon. She prepares to take the stage but Cheri says, “No, I’m going to toast all of you for being here.” She twists the cork of the nearest champagne bottle, resting in a bucket of ice by her chair, and it flies off, missing Ramon’s left ear by a fraction of an inch. Van catches the errant stopper, holds it up like a baseball caught off a pop fly. As Cheri refills everyone’s glass, she notices that Michael’s is barely touched. She puts her hand over his. “I’d like to thank Michael. For this amazing dinner and the care he’s taken to make the night…just right.” Her husband tips a nonexistent hat to her and mouths, Thank you. Taya claps, is again about to leap to her feet, but the shaman rises and extends his arms to Cheri. He motions for her to come to him and takes her hands in his. His gaze is penetrating but kind. He smiles at her as if they’ve shared a secret.
“In honor of you, Ramon wishes me to tell the story of how the Shuar came to respect women. I do my best to make it as Ramon wishes.” The translator smooths his mustache. “Long ago, it was the Shuar men who had breasts and nursed babies. Women gave birth and then were killed. One day a pregnant woman was tending her garden of nuts. She was crying because she knew that once the nuts were ripe, she would give birth and die. A rat approached her and said, ‘Do not cry, I will help you. Female rats have many babies and we do not die afterward. Do as I say, and you will be strong and live.’ The rat gathered the nuts and fed them to the woman, who ate them and became stronger. Then the rat said, ‘Go home to your husband. Tell him the nuts are ready to harvest and come back to me.’ The woman was afraid but did as the rat told her. The next day, the rat was waiting for her in the field. ‘Do not be afraid,’ she said and twisted the woman’s belly until the baby came out. The rat wrapped the baby in leaves and told the woman, ‘Take the baby back to your husband, and do not fear for now you are as strong as a rat.’ The woman returned home, where her husband had built a big fire and was sharpening his machete. When he saw her with the baby he was furious. In a rage he cut off his breasts with the machete and flung them at the woman. This was the moment that everything changed forever for the Shuar people. The man instantly knew that women were to be honored and respected, and ever since that day it has been the duty of the Shuar men to revere their women. The end.”
