20

by John Edgar Wideman

  “‘Yes, old ’ooman. Perhap I have make myself blind, indeed. Perhap I should see a doctor.’ Auntie insist that Uncle Mousse go to see one of our own marabous because it was the white magic that put him in this situation. Of course, my friend, as you have perhap already guess, Uncle Mousse decide to see a European doctor. He got on the bus to Bassi Santa Su.

  “The doctor find Mousse's story incredulous, for he find nothing wrong at all with my uncle's eyes. Nevertheless, Mousse saw the black constantly almost. It flick on and off, on and off in the corner of his left eye. At first it irritate him almost to vexation, but he soon got use to it. The doctor say to him over and over, ‘This I don't believe. Your eyesight is excellent except for a slight asti'matism on your left eye.

  “‘This I have for years, Doctor Blake. This you already have tell me. Listen, I do not know why I see this little black spot out the corner of my eye; I can still see as before.’ He would have say more, but he notice that Dr. Blake was beginning to become too red and his lips look like the lips of a baboon. Very thin and tight. My uncle look at the doctor's eye chart for a moment and then he say, ‘Must I return to you?’

  “‘Yes,’ say the doctor. ‘I will see you two times more. Come on the tenth and the twentieth, please.’

  “‘Very good,’ say Uncle Moustapha, and he went away.

  “Upon arriving to home, Uncle Mousse explain to his wife what the doctor say and ate his lunch with a satisfy smile. Then he retire to his room for his nap. The little black spot follow him to his room like an English lady's dog follow her through town. The room was too warm so he open the window. With the door close and his reading lamp on (my uncle was the first in Sakaam to have electricity and running water in his house), he spread out his mat on the floor and take his Koran to begin his prayer and study before the nap. Everything was silent and still. His heart must have been at peace.

  “As he begin to read, he notice that the dark spot no longer flash on and off, but it remain there, hanging in the air. It begin to grow. He was afraid to notice this growing blackness, because he fear it would disappear before he could turn. Or worse yet, would take completely his sight. A sudden chill touch him as the spot grew larger. He spin around violently. His heart pound as he fix his eyes on the giant, black image before him. Without thinking he fumble in his pocket for his cigarettes, offer one to the white hand of his guest, light his own and say to him, ‘Been busy lately?’”

  “Quite a story,” I said to my friend Idi. “And you say it's true?”

  “Who knows?” said Idi, lighting a Craven. “You must keep an eye on story-telling Africans.”

  1989

  ARIADNE IN EXILE

  Maya Sonenberg

  From the sea, there rise innumerable hilly islands, each densely forested with pines and ringed with palms and juniper bushes. They break through the ocean like scabs, their shores like scrollwork. On some, only a few trees spring slantwise from the rocks; others support villages, a cluster of churches, an airstrip with orange windsock flopping at the end. Around each island, the yellow sand and pink rocks slide down the steep sides of the hills and out under the taut blue-green surface of the water. When the wind shifts to the north and clears the haze from the horizon, waves glint far into the distance toward the mainland where, above a wall of white cliffs, fields spread to the purple mountains, broken only by a grid of dirt roads that lead from one port city to another. Pilots fly from these cities that are never, themselves, visible, bringing washing machines and medicine, record players, newsprint, and presses. They dart down in planes with blue stripes across the tails and leave as quickly. On the islands, people pretend to have forgotten that their own ancestors fought their way from the mainland to these spots of color on the sea; they prefer to believe they've always lived here, that the islands are their past. Ships rarely travel so far anymore although transistor radios pick up country music stations rocking across the water during the still nights in the middle of summer, and when the moon shines, making it seem that city lights are bouncing off the clouds in the east, old men draw the children to them and tell stories about someone who came to live on an island not so very long ago. They sit on the damp grass with children circling them like diamonds around the emerald in a brooch. On the islands, this is all anyone knows of the mainland: distance, technology, stories, a few sounds.

  ————

  What did the girl do alone on the island?

  Summer: she stretched sandaled foot from stone to stone, skirt fluttering above her ankles like the dirty foam that slid off the waves at shore. Poised between steps, she twisted her head, squinted, sniffed at the sea as the wind rode across her skull and spread her hair like a dark stain toward the crumbling styrofoam cups above the high-water mark. She stopped because she saw sails, movement out on the water. No: between the islands, the water was bare, flat as the broad side of a sword. The sun hurt her eyes.

  Out the door of her cabin in the morning, she trampled the light into the thick layer of pine needles, then followed the shore to town. Halfway there, she sat between the boulders, scratched hot sand into the soft backs of her knees and let it slide away. The heat prickled, the other islands floated on a shimmer of silver. Like the echo of feet on floorboards, her brother pranced across her mind, making delicate indentations. Every afternoon, Mother would hold the attic door open, hand braced on her hip, chin in the air. She filled the small landing. “Come, come love. Bring that here.” Her voice clanked down the stairs while the girl brought the tray from the kitchen, loaded with heavy green dishes, flatware, food. Through the fanlight, sun came and bleached the hall carpet. Outdoors, the farm land dropped suddenly, cleanly, and the sea stretched into the west. She might stop to look out the strip of windows on either side of the front door. “Calm,” she might catch herself thinking. But her brother would be hungry, pacing, his hands darting through his hair. At the end of the long second flight, the keys to his room glinted between Mother's fingers like the waves cutting between the rocks at the water's edge. Sun in her eyes, she scanned for those sails and the man manning the tiller. She called him: Theseus, lover, savior, sailor. She rose, her head spinning from the heat.

  When she turned from the sea, it was with the knowledge that he'd be standing at the top of the next rise, spread against the trees. She saw him leap like a wall of fire, his arms swinging wide, battling space, to reach her, to lift her. She blinked: gone. Above the green hills, only the white church steeples fingered the blue—the Galilean Gospel Temple, St. Brendan's Episcopal, St. Andrew's Lutheran, St. Mary Star of the Sea. She walked by on Sunday once when the central doors were braced open, and a few people turned white faces to watch her as she stared into a hymn swelling from the dark.

  There—the first house with a widow's walk like a cage on top, flowers the color of blood in all the window boxes. A screen door whistled before it slammed and she jumped, started to walk quickly toward the center of town. The sound of the sea curled over the red and black tile roofs like a wave.

  He could be in any of the buildings, watching her from behind a ruffled curtain, waiting to be found if only she weren't so hesitant, knocked on doors, asked questions. She let herself dawdle, scuff the gravel between the gas station and the clothing store where the yellow slickers stood disembodied in the bay window, past the pottery shop where the potter sat outside astride a chair. He called out hello and gave her a new name every day: Elsie, Jane, Prudence, Patience, Hope. It had become a joke they both smiled at after she'd gone by.

  In the grocery store she floated past the cashier, holding her skirt gingerly between fingers and thumb. Her hair fell loose from pins, her eyes wide. Softly, slowly, she stopped by the back counter.

  “What would you like, dear?” the shopkeeper asked, lifting her chin to see over the case. Her mottled hands slid over the shiny skins of the fish in their trays of ice behind the glass.

  “Haddock,” the girl said, dragging her voice over the first syllable as she did with the vowels of her
own name, then took the cool package wrapped in wax paper and dropped it into her basket.

  She walked down to the pier where piles of netting rotted, ropes frayed and stiff with salt. People treated her gently in town, she thought. They understood her loss though she had no memory of telling them anything. They understood the waiting made her attentive, silent. Perhaps the women got her story first and repeated it to their men once she was out of hearing, shaking their heads all the while. Perhaps he'd talked to the men before he left, told them to watch out for her. The boards sagged where she walked. In the harbor each float bobbed empty of its boat: midday, all at work far from shore or in the next cove, beyond the convolutions of the land. She watched the water come toward her, fought the breeze that picked up her skirt as if it were trying to dance.

  ————

  How did the girl come to be alone on the island?

  Very simple: she awoke. Through an open door, she saw a slice of blue and no boat on it, no purple sail furled around the boom like dead skin. She'd never seen a sea so empty. At home there were always white yachts in the harbor and trawlers out beyond the breakers. And on their zigzag course from island to island, she'd always woken with the sail between her and the sky, the man's breath sliding down her neck—where was he?

  She sat up into the dank air. One tiny room. No windows, just the open door and the sun guided in along its edge. Across from the bed there was a rocking chair and next to it, a table. Naked, she stood in the doorway, careful of the splintered boards. Under the low green branches of the pines, the sun scooted up from an inlet that curved into the hills, the same as on all the islands they'd seen, shorelines twisted back on themselves like paths in a maze. To the east the horizon was blank, as if home had never existed. But she saw the white cliffs the way they looked from sea—red in the sunset.

  The previous afternoon they had landed at a village dock and walked up a hill, leaning into each other, laughing she remembered, arms linked. They passed the teetering houses and arrived at the square—churches, post office, library, and school placed around a rectangle of green. While he went off to look for food and rope, she sat down near a monument to the war dead with red geraniums planted at its granite base, grass mowed closely around it. The fine hairs were a golden net on his arms as he walked away, and she slumped, curled on her side, and slept. In the morning, she woke to the dark room, triangle of empty water.

  Her toes curled on the doorsill. Watery reflections quivered on the tree trunks, but around her, all was quiet, warm, dead. The day she'd opened the door for him the morning glory vines had hung their pink flowers on the air as if on a still lake. He stood in the path looking down at her, his eyes pale opaque blue, the whites as pure as sugar. He smelled clean and cool although the summer dust should have settled on his shoulders. It hadn't rained for months.

  “I hear your father wants someone to work in exchange for food and a place to sleep,” he said, his voice rich, his vowels flat as the land around them. He hadn't looked as if he needed this job. “They told me all about it in town,” he said. “They said he's had trouble keeping people on.” Around his head midges spotted the air, and behind them the white buildings on the other side of the bay cast blue shadows against the cliffs.

  “Yes, that's right,” she said, “to help manage the farm. Mother's lands stretch all the way to there.” She pointed to the houses on the outskirts of town. “And there,” she said, pointing now to the hills that were only a smudge of violet from where they stood. She thought how she would continue just like this once the estate was her brother's, coming out from the dark house occasionally to stand on the narrow front step and explain the lie of the land to a stranger, looking out over this brightness.

  The young man looked away from the fields and up at the house. She had never seen him before, not in town or on any of the neighboring farms; it was not a sailor's face either but something new, blank and beautiful, hiding nothing, his skin absolutely smooth. When he smiled, only one side of his mouth moved and she saw a glimmer as if he knew something he wasn't letting on. It must have been the shadows changing, though, as he turned toward a sound—her brother's laughter rolling from the attic—so familiar she didn't hear it at first, forgetting that someone else might find it strange here—that whooping and hollering—where the fields lay planted with artichokes and cabbages, the farmhands bending over the plants with their short hoes. Smiling to reassure him, she stepped aside and pulled her collar tightly around her throat.

  In the parlor the golden hands on the clock, shaped like two pointing fingers, had barely moved since she left the room. Mother turned, tilting her head, and patted the plump sofa cushion for the young man to sit on. By the round mahogany table, Father still dozed with his fingers laced through his beard, his feet planted wide on either side of his chair. She watched the young man, how the pink flushed his cheeks and his eyes floated in the sockets, turning from Father to Mother and back again. He hesitated.

  “Sir?” he said and handed over a slip of paper. Father grunted, but before he could say anything her brother snorted and hissed. She felt the dull creak of the walls and floors under his clumsy weight, the dark storm of sound muffling everything else. Father's eyes were slits of glass.

  When the noise stopped, Mother leaned forward so that her pink blouse dipped open, exposing pale skin. “You can go dear.” She smiled and nodded encouragingly as if the girl were too young to understand her words. “Go look to him. I'll call you when it's time to show this young man around.” There was no doubt that he would be hired. Mother touched him, her hand like knotted wood on his. “Don't mind,” she said to him. “You'll get used to it.” When the young man looked puzzled, she added, “Our son. He has his own apartments upstairs. He's a bit difficult; we never know when he'll go off like that.” She shook her head and the silver earrings rattled. She didn't take her hand off his.

  Father was nodding, muttering, trying to conceal his sighs, to disguise his pained expression. “I see you've come about the work,” he said finally, waving the slip of paper. “You come highly recommended. You can start right away if you like. It'll be supervising the work in the fields mostly, some other things too. My wife's just bought some more land and it's getting to be a bit too much for me to handle alone.” He glanced over at Mother and she nodded absently, staring at the back of the young man's head.

  The young man fumbled with his white duck bag. “Thank you, sir. I'm anxious to start.”

  At the cabin door the trees blocked her view—just a narrow path with the green water pounding the rocks at its end. Where was he? His voice? The burst of expelled air when he held her up over him? She had shown him the dark passage to the barn and the stairs up to the room Mother had assigned to him. Perhaps he went back to town. She bent to see under the branches and fidgeted, her fingers squeezing each other. The sun sprang from the rocks at shore. Her brother didn't like bright light. The one time she'd brought a lantern with her, he'd jumped up, arms wider than she was tall. His screams had sliced the air, his feet a shiny black whir as he pawed the floor. Her heart beat in her throat, hands stiff and useless until she thought to blow out the flame. After, she'd always tended him at dawn or in the dusty, murky noontime haze. She'd had all the attic windows boarded up.

  She turned back inside. At the table she slipped her dress over her head; it still smelled of salt. He'd left all her clothes. Why? Her sandals, other dress, warm cloak for winter—the one they'd wrapped themselves in that first night on the water before they'd managed to break into the cubby and pull free two rough blankets. He'd left a sack of groceries, a plastic jug of water, money. She counted it, bills so soft they could be made of cloth, so much money he must mean to be gone a long time. She folded it smaller and smaller until it was just a dense square of paper.

  Beneath her the bed was hard, but he'd provided sheets, a thin pillow, several woolen blankets folded at the foot. Perhaps he planned on being back after the first leaves had fallen. Still, that was month
s and months away. Why? Through the door the sun fell straight. She flung her arm across her eyes and slid down close to the wall. Hard hands, pink cheeks, tan feet branded by the straps of his sandals, hair like chains, thighs that held hers like irons—she'd wish him back, wish back the curl of his lip, the tendons distended in his hand as he held the sails through a storm, knuckles white as the waves kicked up around the boat. He'd taken her away from the farmhouse with its long hallways and twisting stairs and out onto the sea. Deceptive: from her window at home, the water had always been the tight silver surface of a plate, not a puzzle of currents and undertow. After tacking between the islands he'd finally brought her here: one dark room and the tortuous coastline outside the door. Why? She pulled her legs up close to her body. He'd said little about his past, nothing about where they were going. She hadn't cared. He'd held rakes like spears, dinner plates like shields. Suddenly he'd opened his arms, asked her to go.

  For months she'd lain awake waiting for her alarm clock to ring and wondering if he were already up at the other end of the house, pulling on his pants, rubbing his wet face with a towel. As he carried the garbage away from the attic, she watched the lamplight disappear from his back, then climbed, grabbing the dusty rail, to make up her brother's bed and groom him with the silver comb Mother had provided in its own suede pouch. As she fought the snarls, she thought of these new possibilities—that there were people in the world she'd never met, places she'd never been. She thought of the jet trails the young man had pointed out to her, far above the house.

  At night they met again. Her back against the wall, she couldn't swallow, took quick shallow breaths until he had walked down the hallway toward his room. She could turn then, let a rat loose in her brother's apartments as she did every night, stamping so it would run the tunnel of passages to the bedroom. In the morning, there was always a spattering of blood around her brother's mouth to clean; it was dry, brown, and he let her pull it free with her fingernails, grumbling a little.