by Alice Walker
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.
What Is Missing from the World
What is missing from the world is the grandmother, Anunu had said. Oh, there are plenty of grandmothers, little g, but Grandmother, big G, is impossible, some women feel, to find. That is the absence that makes us afraid, she added.
It’s quite an absence, said Kate. And will we find Her in time?
Looking out the window behind Anunu’s desk she watched a blue jay pecking at a banana slug. The slug was the largest she’d ever seen and the blue jay was making a joyful meal of it. Soon another jay came and they began to fight. Another arrived, and another. Soon there was a general melee. She was amazed to see the much-pecked banana slug slowly gathering itself amid the confusion and making its getaway. She laughed.
Anunu gazed at her.
Life, said Kate. It doesn’t pay to give up on it too soon.
Someone had told Kate that Anunu was sixty-five years old. She looked thirty-five. Her skin was smooth and vibrant, her eyes clear and twinkling. Her body strong and lithe. How could this be? Kate scrutinized Anunu carefully.
There is a time in every woman’s life when she realizes the absence of Grandmother, Anunu was saying.
Every woman? asked Kate.
Yes, said Anunu. Although sometimes, most times, the woman will think of it as something else. Some women will suddenly begin to dream of horses. Some will find big black bulls all over their dreams. Naturally this seems quite shocking to them, she said, laughing, though the bull is an early symbol of the Grandmother’s ability to provide sustenance. Preceding the bull would have been the cow. Some women will find themselves entering a dance and not knowing how to do it because there is no teacher and the music, though hauntingly familiar, is impossible to follow. Some people will dream of water, vast expanses of water; they will not be able to swim because they don’t know how and there will be no boat. Some people will begin to dream of rivers, but they will be dry.
I began to dream of dry rivers, said Kate. I took myself down the Colorado in a boat.
And did you find Her? asked Anunu.
Kate thought for a moment. That journey seemed to be more about emptying myself of the past, she said. A lot of my past lives came up, literally, in vomiting, there in the depths of the canyon, revealed for what they were. Dress rehearsals, in a sense, for some later phase of life. I felt, at the end of the trip, as we walked away from the river, that everything I’d carried up to that point that wasn’t necessary to my life had been shaken loose. I was freed into this part of my life which, amazingly, has people like you in it.
Why is that amazing? asked Anunu.
Once when we were journeying, maybe eating peyote or mushrooms, said Kate, I saw you as I feel you’ve always been, through countless ages.
Really? said Anunu.
Yes, said Kate. It was during the period when I was just beginning to understand I no longer needed to take any kind of medicine. I lay there, wide awake, for the most part, unengaged by whatever that particular medicine was. But there was a moment when I glanced over at you and Enoba and you were wearing your headdress of feathers.
A headdress of feathers?
Yes. Do you even own one? asked Kate.
Anunu laughed. No, but I’ll certainly get one now.
They were green and red and purple feathers, and you had worn them much longer than you’ve worn Western clothing. It’s amazing to me that time is so conflatable, said Kate. No doubt we’ve done this sort of thing together before.
It no longer seemed strange to her that she was outside the medicine loop. In the mornings Kate woke early to record her dreams, drink her morning cup of Bobinsana, and walk down to the river to bathe. She had decided not to worry about piranhas or crocodiles but to concentrate instead on her inner peacefulness. She began to have the feeling that it was this inner peace that attracted peace around her.
If she approached the river in this frame of mind, she felt sure no creature would bother her.
Under the palapa she was now much needed. It wasn’t that she was asked to do anything specific; she was mostly required to be present.
Armando had asked her about the sadness of Lalika and been surprised and saddened to learn she had killed a man.
A bad man, said Kate.
Armando looked skeptical.
He had raped her and was trying to rape her friend.
Oh, he said.
In the circle Kate watched as Lalika, under the influence of the medicine, sat with tears streaming down her face.
After the killing she and her friend had tried to escape but they’d been captured and thrown into small, windowless country jail cells. They were beaten by the patrolmen who’d caught them and once inside the jail were raped repeatedly, over several months, by jailers and inmates alike. There had been a surveillance camera in their cells and they had been watched night and day. The beatings and brutal rapes had been preserved on video and marketed by two of the guards. There had not been one moment of privacy until word had finally gotten out about their condition and legal assistance from out of state had come to their aid.
When Lalika had tried to tell her the story Kate had asked, during a pause, whether she’d had therapy.
Lalika had laughed, the only time she did so.
Now she watched as Lalika writhed on the floor across from her. She seemed to be trying to escape from her own body.
Kate rose and knelt beside her. Out of Armando’s way, as he sang over her, and out of Cosmi’s way, as he blew on a burning twig that released billows of pungent smoke. The smoke covered them like a shroud and Kate realized they were indeed at the beginning of something dying. Looking at Armando to ask permission, which he with a nod gave, Kate took Lalika’s hand. It was dry and cold, as if already dead. Lalika’s eyes had rolled back in her head.
Armando was singing a song about forgiveness.
Who is it that most needs forgiving?
Who is it that feels so much pain?
Who is it that would really like to fly
Far far away?
Who is it that can return
Free and gentle
Like the rain?
It is the Self, my love,
My adored one,
It is the Self
That even now
Is running for its Life
Running to its life
Into the arms
Of death.
But we are here
The little sweet friends
Of the Self
And we are holding
On to nothing
But the Self
And we are saying
Beloved
Come back.
He sang this song over and over. Kate, whose time in her hut after dinner every night was spent, with Cosmi’s help, translating Armando’s songs from Kechua or Mayan into Spanish and then into English, began to weep herself, from the beauty of Armando’s voice. When she had first heard his voice on a recording played for her by Anunu, she’d been unable to tell whether he was male or female. She’d thought him very old. He was young though, only in his forties. How was it possible he felt confident, in healing others, to attempt so much?
Was it because the world was in such bad shape, the young must activate the ancient within themselves and the older must activate youth? On a spiritual level was there any difference?
I could not avoid killing him, Lalika had said. He was so huge. When I hit him with my fist he laughed. When I kicked him in the balls he said he felt excited. He wanted to fully experience himself, he said, and that was only possible with a nigger. Kate, Lalika had said, looking sadly into her eyes, what does that mean?
He thought he needed a perpetual victim, said Kate, in order to feel like a winner. He thought he was incapable of being himself on equal terms with a person of color. He thought he would be lost. What he had is by definition an inferiority complex.
They’d sat on a mat outside Lalika’s hut. Lalika had brought with her to the Amazon a tiny piece of crocheting, creamy white and dainty. As she talked, she worked steadily, her needle smooth and silent. If I survive this journey, she told Kate, I will shave my head. Then, until I’m used to being bald, I will wear this little crocheted cap. It has many tears woven in, Lalika said thoughtfully, but if I live, the sun will dry them.
Kate had smiled, though tears came to her eyes.
It was so like women to create their own rituals, she thought, their own little markers of transition, their own ephemeral celebrations. Catching a tear as it slid down her own cheek Kate leaned forward and pressed it into Lalika’s design.
There will be the tears of two of us, then, she said.
Lalika burst into tears.
Why does the thought that two of us will always be present make you cry? she asked.
Because it reminds me of Saartjie, said Lalika.
The Mourners Outside the Church
The mourners outside the church seemed to be waiting for something. Yolo thought perhaps they waited for the priest, whose pickup truck was parked behind him. Yolo, regretting the brazen red of his car, watched as the priest, a middle-aged white man with salt-and-pepper hair, climbed down from his truck, carefully holding his skirt to avoid tripping over it. He watched as he walked heavily into the churchyard, greeting those assembled and stopping briefly to chat with several of them. Yolo watched as something was explained to him and he, like everyone, turned to look down the road.
As they all looked, Yolo heard a distant buzzing. Soon he saw someone approaching on a motorcycle. Though it was a warm, breezy day, this person was wearing a brown leather bomber jacket, black trousers, and black leather boots. Her billowing hair was pressed back from her face by the wind. Yolo rubbed his eyes.
He watched as his old girlfriend Alma, considerably heavier than when he’d last seen her twenty years before, alighted from the motorcycle, unzipped her jacket, reached inside, and brought forth a small silver urn. Holding the urn in front of her, as if it were a candle, she led the procession into the church.
Yolo could remain no longer on the postcard that had been his vacation. Wishing he’d worn something more suitable than shorts and a lighthearted shirt, he stumbled from his car, still astonished to see Alma in this setting, and made his way into the tiny church.
Inside, he sat at the very back. Alma was being greeted very warmly by everyone she passed. Many people embraced her. She seemed much older, ravaged by the years since he’d last seen her. There was a stoniness that surprised him. She moved jerkily, carefully raising a foot, carefully putting it down. Yolo watched as she placed the urn on the altar. He wondered if the young man who’d died was her son.
It was an overdose, of course, she told him later as they sat on her lanai sipping beers. She lived in a rambling house that had a wide corridor down the center of it, a breezeway, that opened out toward the ocean. And indeed, the breeze that traversed the island constantly moved through it. It was a breeze that lifted Alma’s jet-black hair, in which not a thread of gray was seen, and covered them with the scent of flowers and fallen, overripe, mangoes.
I’m still astonished that I should be sitting here with you, said Yolo. And that I was one of the last people to sit with your son. He was very good-looking, he added.
Alma drew in a breath and followed it with a drag on her cigarette. She’d taken off the jacket and slacks and was now wearing a pareo and tank top. Her dark eyes were swollen from crying. Her hand shook as she removed the cigarette from her lips. Just behind her on the wall was a large faded poster of James Dean. He was looking, as usual, troubled and ill at ease.
Alma followed Yolo’s gaze.
My father worshiped James Dean, she said. He wanted to be just like him.
What, said Yolo, without thinking: crazy and fucked up? Or gay?
The old Alma would have laughed.
Now she took a
swig of her beer, opening another bottle as she drained the one she had.
He died like him, she said.
Yeah? said Yolo.
Ran his motorcycle over a cliff. Into the sea.
Really?
It’s his jacket I wear. The motorcycle I bought myself.
Do you like it very much?
Alma shrugged. It’s my ceremonial gear, she said. Like a tuxedo, where you come from. I wear it for all special occasions where it is important that my father’s influence is acknowledged. My mother died when I was three. She was Hawaiian.
Your father wasn’t? said Yolo in surprise.
German and Portuguese, she said. Other things too no doubt; you know how mixed-up Hawaiians are. But those two they claimed and tried to implement.
They were sitting on a wicker sofa on the lanai. Yolo lit another cigarette and threw the one he had been smoking into the ashtray, shaped like a mongoose, on the table in front of them. The mongoose had been brought to the islands to eat some pest or other, he seemed to recall from one of his tourist brochures, but the pest slept during the day and the mongoose at night. Or vice versa. So they’d become friends and waved briefly at one another in the late afternoon. Now the island was overrun with them and he’d heard they ate up people’s chickens.
They were like . . . overseers, really, said Alma. A separate class. They are the ones that got land without having to buy it, for instance, after Hawaiians like my mother’s people had their communal lands taken away from them and were placed on plantations to work. Along comes my dad, who’s given everything a young white boy could want. Clothes, money, cars, motorcycles. Except all he wants is to be James Dean. And after only one movie.
Yolo laughed.
That’s how slim the pickings were around here for a role model for someone like him. Hot-tempered, crazy, a European though born in the tropics. Whenever they traveled to the mainland dozens of people were sure to tell him how lucky he was. Just to be Hawaiian. Just to live in Hawaii. Paradise. Rebel Without a Cause? You bet.
With a sigh of exasperation, she rose to answer the phone, which had been ringing since they arrived. When she returned she was carrying two fresh beers and a plate of sashimi. On the floor near her feet there were already three empty bottles. His own bottle, though warm by now, was still half full. He took the cold bottle of Corona she offered and rubbed it across his forehead.
