A Rapture of Ravens: Awakening in Taos: A Novel (The Justine Trilogy)

by Linda Lambert

  “That’s right. For a favor Brill did for a friend apparently. For several years, Mabel had gone to New York to see him and he had become a friend and confidante, as well as her psychiatrist. Yet, she clearly didn’t have a grasp of the value the manuscript would claim in later years when it was purchased by U.C. Berkeley.”

  So the original manuscript was in her father’s school. “Perhaps you can help me with another question.” She paused. “Dorothy Brett returned to the ranch before Lawrence’s death. One of his letters asked her to look for old manuscripts left behind. Did she find any?”

  “I don’t think so, but there were rumors of a key, a strong box perhaps. I don’t know what happened to that part of the story.”

  Justine was pensive. She watched the sunlight dance across the checkered tablecloths, rendering the lace curtains translucent. “I imagine that Mabel resented Brett’s return as well. I understand she wasn’t fond of her.”

  “Mabel saw Brett as an intruder from the git go. There she was at every gathering, holding Toby close to Lawrence. She didn’t want to miss a word.”

  “Toby?”

  “That’s what she called her hearing device, it resembled a trumpet.”

  Justine laughed. “That must have been most annoying! Now there were three women vying for his attention.”

  “At least.” Cheyenne stood, picking up her coffee cup, ready to return to work.

  Justine nodded and paused, gazing out the window at the gazebo and swing. She called after Cheyenne, “Do you know how to get to the Kiowa Trail?”

  Cheyenne turned, “Mabel’s cave?”

  “Yes. Mabel’s cave.”

  CHAPTER 7

  JUSTINE WOULD ENTER THE KIOWA trail just outside Arroyo Seco, a lazy little town of shops and cafes, boasting the best ice cream in the West. So they claimed. Following Cheyenne’s rough directions to the Kiowa trail, she drove straight through town north into a ‘70’s housing development running up the hill where she confronted a barbed wire fence barring further progress by car. From there, she would hike to the trail crossing near the floor of the infamous cliffs and cave. “Infamous” because they had served as the setting for the climactic scene in Lawrence’s The Woman Who Rode Away. Justine had read the story soon after happening upon Lawrence’s letter to Isabella saying he had used Mabel Dodge Lujan as his leading character in the story. One of his best pieces, she thought. I find myself liking his short stories and poetry best. Abstract and powerful—more like a novella. The story chronicles the sacrifice of a woman to the gods by “savage” Indians—intended perhaps as a parallel to Mabel’s marriage to Tony.

  The cliffs and cave loomed before her as she crested the rise. Unlike the ice-covered mountain confronted by the woman in the story—that “dazzling California girl from Berkeley” as Lawrence had called his leading character—Justine found no ice, or even flowing water. Her plan was to examine the cave, then jog to the ranch, which she estimated to be perhaps seven miles to the northwest. The Kiowa trail actually originated in Taos lands near the Pueblo, but Justine didn’t feel comfortable requesting entry at that trailhead, assuming the Tribal Council would turn her down. These sacred lands, once well-trodden by sportsmen when they were part of the National Forest Service, are held inviolable unless outsiders are invited in for a ceremony or feast day. As it should be, she thought.

  The waterfall had dried by late September, yet she could see evidence of the deep crevices into the mountain made by winter ice and a fierce spring runoff from Taos Mountain. Since snow, like rain, had been scarce this year, the land was parched and she doubted that the waterfall had been plentiful or lasted long. She checked her watch: 7:30. Sunrays caught the fragmented granite along the edge of the cliff. Cat’s claw vines and clumps of grass clung to rock walls. The cliffs reminded her of the tufo mountains in western Italy where she and Amir had first made love. They were in search of an Etruscan tomb that day, but found each other instead. Her skin tingled, her body warmed by the sensuous memory.

  From above, a smattering of rocks tumbled from the ledge, inches away, she jumping aside. What made them fall? She searched for a clumsy bear, a mountain lion—something less threatening.

  Once again, stones crashed to the ground alongside the path. Justine cupped her hand over her brow, straining to see what had precipitated the collapsing stones. At first she saw nothing unusual; if it were a predatory animal, she had no intention of meeting it face to face. While camping in the Sierras once, she had discovered that she could outrun a bear, but she knew well enough she could not outrun a mountain lion. At any rate, she had no intention of trying.

  More crumbling stones, until finally, a helpless cry. Justine searched the edge of the cliff, seeing first the teetering toes of moccasins and bare ankles, hands reaching forward, flowing black hair hanging loose. Much too close to the edge for comfort. No face nor features that could be deciphered from two hundred feet.

  “Wait!” Justine yelled. “Hold on! I’m coming to get you.” She didn’t wait for a reply, but moved swiftly to the dry waterfall, and began to climb.

  “No!” screamed the voice in return. “Please, no. Let me be.”

  Justine talked rapidly as she climbed. “I’m Justine. I want to meet you. Wait for me. . . .” She didn’t care if her words made any sense, as long as they delayed the woman’s fall. Jump? Her scrambling climb up the two hundred foot sheer cliff was not easy, but she found the energy that comes with urgency. Minutes later she reached the ledge, placed both hands on the grass-carpeted edge and catapulted her body to the flat rise above. She lay on her stomach for several seconds, gratefully gulping the thin air at more than eight thousand feet.

  The young woman watched as though mesmerized. Was she transfixed by the stranger’s presence, or heroic climb? Justine rolled on her side and stared at the young woman, sizing her up. Around fifteen or sixteen, she thought. Lovely high cheekbones that Justine had observed among the Hopis; stringy, oily black hair that looked as though it hadn’t been washed in weeks. Penetrating black eyes registered a blend of terror and curiosity. They stared at one another for some moments, Justine finally breaking the silence, “What’s your name?”

  The teenager remained silent, her eyes flitting from side to side.

  The older woman began to chatter again. “I’m Justine,” she repeated, “I’m new here and living by myself south of town. I don’t know Taos very well. I like to run and this seemed like a good place. My parents live in Italy. I came here to work—take a job.” She paused; the girl hadn’t moved. “Will you help me up?”

  The young girl hesitated, then moved forward, timidly extending her hand.

  Justine grabbed it, then did something spontaneous. Risky. Standing, she pulled the girl into a firm embrace. The girl started to shiver, then weep softly; the cry, finally, breaking into thunderous sobs.

  Holding her firmly, Justine said, “You have to be careful up here, you could fall.” The slight body convulsed further in her arms. They stood intertwined for a time, until she could feel the girl sigh, begin to still. “Can you tell me your name?” she asked again.

  “Taya,” the girl said in a nearly inaudible voice.

  “Taya,” repeated Justine, keeping her voice soft and soothing, stroking the girl’s back. “Beautiful. Shall we go? Is there another way out of here? I didn’t care for the climb too much.”

  The girl gazed at Justine with a shy half-smile. Her tear-streaked face was round and beautiful. She nodded and pointed east along the ridge.

  Justine took hold of Taya’s hand. Looking around to see if anything had been left, she spied a photo lying on the grass near the ledge. When she bent down, she saw a photo of a handsome young man whose ethnicity she couldn’t discern. She picked it up—still holding tight to the girl’s hand—and asked: “Yours?”

  Taya nodded. Justine handed it over to the girl, who shoved it into her pocket. She then guided Justine east along the ledge path that led down to the Kiowa trail. When they reached the
car, Justine helped her into the passenger seat, buckling the seatbelt; the girl slumping like a deflated doll, as though wanting to shrink into personal oblivion.

  Justine decided to take Taya to her own home for the time being. She would figure out what to do from there. She drove back through Arroyo Seco, and continued straight at the blinking light, turning left onto Blueberry Hill, the ridge road above town. Is this hill the source of the song by the same name? she wondered, fascinated once again by how irrelevant trivia can unexpectedly pop into mind. The terrain was stunning. Golden cottonwoods flowed across the desert landscape dotted, with earth tone adobe homes. According to the map, this road would make a wide girth around town and come out at the Ranchos post office. It did, depositing the two women close to Highway 110 and Justine’s house on Sand Storm.

  Justine filled her bathtub with very warm water, found a fluffy towel and sat the shampoo and soap within reach. She returned to the living room to find Taya where she’d left her, wrapped in an oversized beach towel, sitting in the reclining rocker. Her tear-streaked face gave her the appearance of a sad clown; she seemed numb. Justine practically lifted the girl out of the chair, leading her to the warm bath.

  She turned away while Taya stood as though numb, then wordlessly undressed herself and climbed into the tub. At first, she stared at the slippery soap Justine handed her as though she didn’t know what to do with it. Then she began to wash herself slowly.

  Justine was not about to leave the room and find a drowned girl at the bottom of her tub on her return. Pulling the shower curtain across and turning away, Justine sat on the toilet stool and continued talking. “I was born in Berkeley, where my father worked. My mother was from Egypt.”

  “Egypt?” asked Taya, without affect.

  “In North Africa—where the pyramids are. My dad was from Nebraska originally, part Lakota. Our family was happy; at least I thought so. I was an only child and my grandparents lived far away, so I didn’t see them much. I missed my grandmothers,” she said, remembering those fond moments in childhood when her grandmother Laurence gave her a warm bath after they had worked in the flowerbeds all day.

  Taya stared at Justine from around the shower curtain, an expression of sorrow in her ebony eyes. “You must have been lonely,” she said so softly that Justine struggled to hear.

  “I was. Yes. I was a fat little girl too. I felt invisible. I was pretty miserable.” She paused. “Thank you for understanding.”

  “Invisible?”

  “As though I wasn’t there. People would look right through me. I felt like nothing.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Justine asked.

  “Three sisters. All grown.”

  “No brothers?”

  Taya’s face darkened. She turned away, letting the shower curtain fall back into place, a wall of plastic.

  Justine surmised that she did have a brother. “I actually came to Taos when I was eight,” she said. “In the spring of 1989, my father brought me to one of his meetings in Taos. I saw petroglyphs in the caves along the Rio Grande rift. It was so exciting. I thought I wanted to do the same thing my dad did, look for old things—pueblos, art, pottery, people who have disappeared.”

  “Can a girl feel invisible just because she’s a girl?” Taya’s voice was flat.

  “Sure, even beautiful girls like you can feel invisible. In most parts of the world, boys are considered more important, so they and others often treat girls as though they’re invisible. Women have felt invisible for hundreds—thousands—of years.”

  “My mom and gramma don’t feel that way. They’re strong. They always know what to do.”

  “I’ll bet they felt that way when they were younger.”

  Taya began to shiver. “I’m cold.”

  “Stand up,” Justine told her, quickly wrapping her young guest in a large pink fluffy towel, using a second towel to swathe her hair into a turban. “Now,” she said, “you look like a princess.”

  A flicker of amusement, appreciation moved through Taya’s eyes, but didn’t stay long. “Can I stay here?”

  What’s going on with her brother? Who’s in the photo? “I don’t want your family to think you’ve disappeared or been kidnapped.”

  Taya frowned, “They won’t care.”

  Justine shook her head. “It often feels that way, doesn’t it? For now, I can’t let you stay unless I call your mother. While your clothes are in the dryer we’ll have something to eat.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Acosta? This is Dr. Justine Jenner. Taya and I met when I was on a run east of town. I offered her a ride.”

  “East of town? Why wasn’t she in school?” the woman demanded.

  “Taya will need to answer that. We’re both exhausted and she is a little upset. I would like to have her stay the night, if that’s okay. I’ll bring her home in the morning.”

  “Doctor, you said? Is she all right?” Her voice turned from anger to concern.

  “She’s fine. Just a little rumpled and tired. Taya and I were both a little lost today, so we helped one another. Her clothes are in the washer and we’re going to have something to eat.”

  “Let me talk to my daughter.”

  Justine handed the phone to Taya, who grimaced at the thought of talking to her mother. “Yes. . . Okay. . . I’m fine, but I just couldn’t go to school today. . . I’m sorry I didn’t let you know. Mom, I’m okay!”

  As she listened, Justine remembered the times she had worried her parents through her own mildly rebellious behavior, deliberately not getting home on time, disappearing occasionally. She felt a sudden wave of regret.

  Taya abruptly handed the phone back to Justine. “She wants to talk to you.”

  “Well, okay, Dr. Jenner. Justine. I guess it’s all right,” said Taya’s mother. Uncertain, perhaps, and clearly confused; nonetheless, she had given her permission.

  “Thank you. My cell is 510-338-4343,” Justine said slowly. “Call if you have any questions. Since tomorrow is Saturday, is it alright if I bring her home by ten in the morning?”

  Justine turned around to find Taya standing in the kitchen. She was grinning. The towels hung loose on her head and body, turning her into a blur of pink. She looked like a seven-year old waif.

  CHAPTER 8

  TAYA SLURPED HER CHICKEN NOODLE soup as though it were a gourmet delicacy. Whenever Justine was sick or just feeling down as a child, her mother would warm up Campbell’s soup and make tea. “Better than antibiotics,” her mother had assured her. Justine smiled at Taya, who glanced up with a weak grin. How delicate we are, Justine thought. We girls, a family unto our own. She sat quietly, nursing her own soup, until Taya finished hers. “More?”

  Taya shook her head and reached for her tea. Through the window, a deep orange ribbon lay lazily on the landscape. The sun was almost down. Where had the day gone?

  Justine knew their life experiences had not been similar—yet, somehow, they were developing a kinship. How is that so? Did gender supersede culture? Genetics? Worldviews? Female brains are hard-wired for communication and collaboration, empathy and compassion. Yet, she knew that these attributes could smother a woman in softness if she didn’t also discover her strong voice. A woman could enable victimhood if she tried too hard to please, as a consequence neglecting her own needs. She knew this all too well for she’d been down this road before.

  Taya ran her hand over the sea foam quilted bedspread in the guest bedroom. Even though the sky was still barely aglow, Justine drew the shades and turned on the reading light. “It’s 8:00, not too early to go to sleep,” Justine suggested, tucking the blanket under the young girl’s chin and sitting down on the side of the bed. “I’m tired too. I could use a good night’s sleep.” She paused briefly. “Who is the young man in the photo, Taya?”

  Taya paused, answering hesitantly. “My boyfriend, Ricardo. He loves me,” she said as an after thought, as though it explained everything. Justine could feel the anxiety in Taya’s voi
ce, desperately wanting those simple words to be true.

  “Handsome young man,” Justine said, leaning forward to kiss her young guest on the forehead and smooth her hair. “Do you love him back?” Taya nodded. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  Relieved that it had been a friendly face in the photo, Justine wondered what love meant to Taya? A crush? Thoughts of her sophomore year at Berkeley High flooded her mind. Jack Granger. I fell hard, she mused. I was so sure I was desperately in love, but he didn’t know I was alive. She was surprised that it still caused her heart to flutter. She turned off the reading light, picked up her Mac laptop off the desk, and returned to the kitchen to wash dishes, answer her e-mail, and then take a shower.

  What does love mean to me? As the warm water massaged Justine’s body, she sighed, closing her eyes, imagining Amir’s fingers touching her back in the small Italian town. He’d slid into the narrow shower stall behind her, his naked body pressing against her back and buttocks. She didn’t flinch as his hand reached for her breasts, the other encircling her waist, pulling her toward him. He kissed her neck and shoulders. Trembling in his grasp, she arched her back to press more fully into his body. Shampoo floated down her shoulders and onto his chest, silkened flesh sliding smoothly together. Steam surrounded them as their breathing quickened.

  Justine opened her eyes and shook her head to loosen the memory, to put it away. She trembled when she let her body remember his touch. His touch had provoked her even more than his striking good looks. Amir possessed a subtle humor, a tension of desire that radiated from his body as though he was desperately attracted to her, yet held back the reins of advance, trembling on the brink of a sexual precipice. She found the anticipation palpable. The way he would tilt his head and stare at her with those compelling black eyes.

  Taya slept nearly twelve hours. Having stayed up later, Justine was still in bed at 8:00, watching prism rainbows dance across the ceiling, lounging in her memories, when she heard her guest close the bathroom door. She thought about the day ahead. At 1:30, she would meet with Mike Sandoval about their project. This morning she would take Taya home. But first, she wanted to learn more about the girl’s life and motivation for attempting suicide. Might she encourage the family to agree to counseling or intervention? Would they consider such a suggestion as a violation of privacy?