Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (5 page)

In the kitchen my younger sister embraced me. We had not seen each other in nearly a decade. Unlike me, she was slender and dark. Her hair now streaked with silver. My older sister, her hair a russet that matched her dress, and her shoes, was busy making potato salad, her specialty. My father sat at the kitchen table nursing a cup of chamomile tea.

“Daddy, you must eat something.” It seemed to me Tonya was always saying something like this. She was a natural-born comforter. I couldn’t have imagined a wake without her in charge of it.

Now she stood over our father, as our mother might have; her arm around his shoulders. They looked very much alike. Firm-fleshed (even though Dad looked really old) and dark, with eyes that lit up their faces. They shared an easily aroused animation and love of good times.

He nodded at his cup.

“That’s nothing,” she said. “Tea. Have some chicken. Potato salad.”

“I can’t eat,” he said. He tilted his head in the direction of the living room.

“She would want you to,” said Tonya.

Harriet gave me an absentminded shove toward the food.

“You eat something too, Roberta.”

I was named for my father.

“Daddy,” I said, taking the hand that now clung to the teacup, “you and I are going to have some dinner.” He grunted.

“No refusals and no hesitation allowed.”

“Oh, well,” he said, looking up.

My father adored me. He thought I was just right. Though named for him, I didn’t look like him at all.

I took two plates from the pile on the table, and moved toward the pots on the stove. I sensed rather than saw the dejection in the faces of both my sisters. I had always been able to wrap our father around my finger. He’d always listened to me.

“Um,” I said, forking up collard greens.

“I knew Roberta would get you to eat,” said Tonya, who’d cooked all the food.

Harriet said nothing. The hug between us now felt forgotten.

This was as much as Kate could write on the Post-its. She stuffed the story in her duffel along with her hiking boots and toiletries, and settled herself comfortably in the boat. Overhead there were vultures and crows, black and graceful against the terra cotta canyon walls. She daydreamed about the drift of her life; the lover in her house, in her bed. The recurring dream of the dry river. Her therapist’s skepticism that she knew what she was doing, going out to run a live river in her waking life.

She felt no stirring within. Though perhaps her mother’s visit had been one. It had been a very long time since she’d dreamed of her. After the crash, after identifying the bodies, she’d feared nightmares, but she’d been spared those. Her poor father’s body had been crushed like an accordion. She shuddered now to remember it. And yet, she felt she must remember it, linger over her response to it, there under the open protection of the sky, in the middle of charging waters, vulnerable to being dashed against rocks herself. She had longed to touch some whole part of him. And found that whole part in one of his feet. She’d grasped his toes, so long and hairy on their tops, and she’d caressed them until she felt satisfied. They never warmed from her hands, not the slightest bit. That was what being dead meant, she thought.

Now she realized that she was weeping, just a little, and that a pain in her shoulder, carried so long she’d gotten used to it, seemed to be shifting closer to the surface of her skin. She began to rotate her shoulders. Avoa, sitting next to her, began to rotate hers as well. Before long they were doing miniaturized yoga postures in the tiny boat.

Ahead of them the other women’s boat was entering unusually powerful rapids. As they watched, startled, it overturned. They had barely time to think before they were running the same rapids. She wondered if they too would be flung into the river. But no, their oarswoman steered them slightly more to the left of a huge boulder that rose up like an iceberg in the middle of the river. They sped past the others, all swimming madly toward the shore.

That night, as they sat around the campfire, she was flooded with gratitude. To see the women safe, to hear their humorous stories of their surprise, their fright. To know they had depended on their own strength and courage to pull themselves to shore.

That night, in the adrenaline glow of having survived, the talk was, of course, about sex.

How much and how often, right? said Margery, drying her hair with a towel and throwing a fistful of dried twigs on the fire.

How long and how much does size matter, anyway? said Cheryl, biting into a chocolate bar she’d stashed for just such an occasion.

The women laughed.

“Gimme something that’s not hard,/Come on, come on.”

Sue sang the refrain from John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Give Me Something,” from their
Double Fantasy
album. She loved Ono for recording what sounded like a live orgasm.

There’s a period in there where you really don’t want anything hard, said Kate.

Not me, said Cheryl. I fantasize big, hard, and long.

And black? asked Kate.

Cheryl colored. Sometimes, yes, she said. I’ll never forget the day I ambled into Good Vibrations and there it was, hanging on the wall.

The women roared.

There’s fantasy and then there’s, ah, actual flesh, said Annie, an oarswoman their own age, who had come over to join them. Firm is one thing; hard is something else, she said. She was a wiry Texan with a hawk’s nose and piercing gray eyes. Her wild white-streaked hair fanned out around her faded red baseball cap. The young can handle hard, she said; at our age firm is very acceptable. She lay back and looked thoughtfully into the fire. I once had a lover who preferred the term
full.
He thought being hard inside me would be painful, and it was.

Nature takes care of it very well, said Margery. If only someone would tell men it’s okay. Not to be hard as a rock, not to need to drive a woman through the bed.

Sally, wandering over from the other campfire, overheard this comment.

Well, she said, laughing with the women, I can see where the inquiring mind needs to be.

Oh, yes, said Cheryl, come sit with the big girls. We’ll tell you what time of night it is.

I can’t believe you’re all straight, said Sue.

There was a long pause.

I’ve been straight for incredibly long periods, said Margery. Thoughtfully.

The women hooted.

The moon overhead was creamy and round. The river was a wide yellow thread through the canyon. No longer on it, the women felt their kinship still. It was as if it now moved through their bodies, even while they slept.

She was drawn to Sue. She seemed so plain, so clear, so unadorned. They had separated from the others and were exploring caves, and their petroglyphs, high above the canyon floor.

I have always lived with women, said Sue, from the very beginning.

Didn’t you miss having a boyfriend? asked Kate.

Why would I miss what I never had? asked Sue, studying the triumphant figure of a woman giving birth. It was almost shocking, the power expressed in the woman’s attitude. The rock the artist had chosen was tall and round, like a person with its belly protruding. The woman giving birth was carved on the belly. Amazing, that artists were so alike, throughout eons. As giving birth was the same. But not the ecstatic sense of a woman’s power. That had changed, drastically. Now most women actually thought the doctor delivered the baby. Amazing.

Kate was silent, thinking of how she’d begun missing having a boyfriend long before having one. A boyfriend had seemed inevitable. The older girls at school talked about boys all the time, and had boyfriends. Her parents were there in front of her every single day; her mother cherishing, her father positively doting. It had seemed so natural. The only way to go. Her girl friends at school had certainly never appealed to her. They seemed too much like her, always worrying about how they looked, what to wear, how their hair was doing. She liked to go shopping with them, liked to eat and study with them. The thought of kissing one of them had never crossed her mind. In fact, even now, the thought of kissing one of
them
made her queasy.

Boys never interested me, said Sue. I always got along well with them, but nary a romantic thought had I. Now, though, I’m celibate.

Really,
said Kate. Her hand rested near a carving of a large sunburst. A tiny figure that looked like a goat raised its head as if enjoying the radiance. She had never expected to find signs of human life in the canyons that radiated out from the main one. At a place far from the river that was reached after a long climb that began behind a waterfall they’d come to the place the Hopi claimed as the spot they’d emerged into the present world. The fourth world. The worlds before that had been destroyed. And at that spot, there had been a human handprint. She had felt the impact of that small handprint as if it were a handshake. Someone from centuries, perhaps thousands of years, past, reaching out to her. It was in a very awkward place, impossible to touch, and so she had blown a kiss of thanks. And bowed deeply. Thank you, artist, she had said. You are our help when we can receive no other.

At first, said Sue, I thought I was different because my mother did not love me. Was I always looking for a loving mother? This was the question put to me by countless shrinks. I kinda didn’t think so. She grinned. After all, I found so many of them. You’d think I’d eventually have had enough.

Enough? asked Kate.

Loving mothers, said Sue.

I find I don’t really have a preference, said Kate.

Really,
said Sue.

People are remarkably similar, said Kate, when you relate to individuals. What do I like, she mused, as they sat on a boulder in the sun. Well, passion and gentleness and good humor and . . .

I suppose some men have that, said Sue. I’m still not interested.

Kate laughed.

What a time they lived in, she thought. At least those of us living in the West, in the present century, instead of in the Middle East or other parts of the world where time, for women, had stopped in the Middle Ages. There were women on the planet who were not allowed to show their faces. Not permitted to smile at a man who was not a relative without the possibility of being beaten. There were women being stoned, for showing legs or hair. And yet, the carvings all around them spoke of another time before the present and before, even, the recorded past. A time when women were joyous about their naked bodies. Free.

She thought of the bumper sticker that some wily feminist had created:
DON’T DIE WONDERING
. And she wouldn’t. She’d found pleasure eventually in relating to women as lovers. But she couldn’t claim she thought they were better, as lovers, or as partners, than men. And this was, actually, a great comfort to her; she felt, finally, in emotional and erotic balance. Having parents whom she loved fairly equally, she’d been puzzled on some level that she must, as an adult, choose to relate primarily to one or the other sex. Whose idea was this, really? she wondered. Freud’s? And what a lot of lies he’d told trying to avoid facing his own childhood sex abuse. Because of him generations of people had believed three-year-olds knowingly seduced their grandfathers! She had accepted the adventures before her, and had, so far, survived them. And now, like the artists of old, carving their knowledge of ecstasy and power on rocks, she could leave a gentle, indelible message of self-love to all humans everywhere.

And now, perhaps it was time to leave that area of exploration, and, like Sue, to enter another: the life of the virgin, one who is whole unto herself.

So that is how you have changed, he said to her, when she returned. That is the one change I would never have guessed!

They were lying cozily in bed, her leg over his. In the old days this position itself would have been an invitation.

Are you sure? he asked.

It isn’t, as it must seem, a mental decision, she said.

He waited.

And I don’t think it’s forever. But what do I know?

Please don’t be too angry with me, he said. But I’m not ready. Would you consider tapering off gradually? I’m not ready to lose this part of our life yet.

She lay, only a moment, reflecting.

I’m not ready either, I think.

He grinned.

Oh, don’t be so cocky, she said.

Making love, tapering off, was a way of being gentle to them both.

And now when she lay in his arms she savored and grieved the richness, the sweetness, the sharp edge of intimacy she would be leaving. She felt she would be leaving the body itself. But there was a land beyond the sexual body, and friends like Sue proved it. They were out there in it, already, inhabiting new forests, sailing new seas.

And Sure Enough

And sure enough, almost the first words out of the shaman’s mouth were: no sex. He was short and brown and round with an open and friendly face.
Young.
She was surprised. She’d thought shamans had to be old, thin, a bit haggard by their wisdom. A trifle gloomy. But no, Armando Juarez was in his forties, and, though he had grandchildren, he seemed as jolly and nimble as a boy. His straight black hair was cut just below his ears, his black eyes gazed merrily back at the group. They were seven. Five women, ages forty to sixty-five; two men, a slender New Yorker of a youthful, ambiguous age and an older man, perhaps forty-five, from Utah.

Not with yourself, he joked. And not with each other.

Could we ask why? asked Kate.

Maybe the medicine is jealous, said the man from Utah, chuckling.

Armando was serious. It is because that is how it is, he said. From time before time. Making love is something we enjoy, of course. But it has its place and time that is not the same place and time as the Grandmother medicine. This medicine, you will see, is from the Grandmother. That is its spirit. Grandmothers are not sexy.

That’s what you think, muttered one of the women, and everyone smiled. Including Armando.

You’re right, that’s not the reason, he said. Don’t tell my wife I said something so stupid. She would kill me.

There was a long silence.

It is to pay respect, he said finally, reflectively. It is to have an experience of the soul that is undistracted by desire.

Oh me, oh my, said the youngish New Yorker.

Kate had met this group at the airport only hours before. It was the first time any of them had visited this country. The first time any of them had traveled to South America. At the airport they’d recognized one another immediately as Medicine Seekers. There they stood, speaking only a halting, basic Spanish, those who spoke it at all. Loaded down with backpacks, baseball caps and straw hats, waterproof duffels, sturdy sandals or boots.

They had the look of people deliberately distancing themselves from the center of things, as their own cultures defined it. Seeking the edge, the fringe. But also, paradoxically, the heart. At least they hoped so.

Again Kate found herself in a tiny boat, thousands of miles from anyone she knew, on a river, the Amazon this time, heading for the forest.

He had watched her go. This time, because he was going somewhere too, they’d parted at the airport at home. He’d carried her brown duffel and her faded mauve backpack, and she’d carried her bag of oranges. They stood at the back of the line as people boarded the plane, their bundles around their feet, their bodies touching. At last it was time for her to board. He hugged her, she raised herself a bit, they kissed.

Enjoy Hawaii, she said. I almost wish I were going with you. Somewhere safe: mellow people, danceable music, beautiful girls.

He laughed. No, you don’t, he said.

I don’t even know why I’m going the other way, she said, with a mock grimace, as the flight attendant took her ticket.

You have to, he said.

Who knew! she said, shrugging, disappearing toward the plane.

Apparently enlightenment of any sort required a lot of regurgitation. Kate remembered telling a friend about her experience with magic mushrooms. How much they’d helped her when she’d been overwhelmed with grief. It had been a time in the seventies when she finally got it that the earth was being destroyed; that human beings were living in a time when Time was running out. She’d taken the medicine with no idea it would help her. It had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, an odd visitor had brought it. Really she’d taken it because she didn’t care anymore. Any reality seemed better than the one she was in. That of knowing humans had fouled their nest so badly it would no longer nurture them. And the first thing that happened was she’d gotten rotten sick. Nausea. Worse than being pregnant. And she’d thrown up.

She’d urged her friend to try the medicine. But the friend dismissed it. I can’t bear being nauseous, she’d said.

But there’s the other side of being nauseous, Kate said. You get to the other side. And that is where you want to get. It’s not just about being sick to your gills.

No, thanks, said the friend. I couldn’t do it.

Kate thought of this as she sat, shivering, hunched over a hole that had been dug in front of her in the ground.

They’d been asked to drink half a gallon of a frothy liquid that tasted like soapsuds. This was to provoke the vomiting and the diarrhea that would clean them out. You could never put a sacred medicine into a polluted body. The heavy meat eaters, if there were any, were especially warned. Fortunately, for this trip, unlike all the others in her life, she’d read everything she could find on what this experience with plant medicines might be. She’d even gone to a local shaman at home, surprised that one lived within driving distance of her. What was happening in the world, she had wondered, that it was possible to call up a shaman who spoke your language and whose voice mail said yes, call again, there might be a space for you? She had gone, taken the horrible-tasting medicine, and for the next seven hours, after the gut-wrenching nausea and diarrhea, had sat wearing a black mask over her eyes, and watched the pictures her plant friends drew for her. It was exactly like being in school, but with fascinating text material. The teacher however was unique. She was Grandmother. The oldest Being who ever lived. Her essence that of Primordial Female Human Being As Tree. Surprisingly, she was not angry. Or even, apparently, perturbed. It was as if she were explaining how a pet project she’d personally sponsored had somehow gone wrong. But this was only the tiniest part of it.

The waves of nausea were like real waves, bending her double by their force. Into the hole went everything that wasn’t internally attached. And though the waves were powerful, her dislike of them was not. This was different; even vomiting so violently that her body was bathed in sweat, Kate noticed this. She saw that even though throwing up is itself revolting, she had, after many sessions with Grandmother, learned to do it well; almost elegantly. She smiled, even as another wave rocked her off her rough-hewn log seat and to her shaken knees. She did not care anymore about the discomfort of this phase. She knew a phase was all it was. That beyond this three hours of drinking soapsuds and vomiting and going to the bushes, Grandmother waited, just as she had waited for indigenous people sick with disease and fear for thousands of years.

I am an American, Kate thought. Indigenous to the Americas. Nowhere else could I, this so-called Black person—African, European, Indio—exist. Only here. In Africa there would have been no Europeans, no Native Americans. In Europe, no Africans and no Indians. Only here;
only here,
she said, as the waves of vomiting continued past the three hours and into the evening. I will bear this as long as it takes. This old medicine surely must care for, belong to, me.

She was grateful when Armando brought a new drink, pinkish, and lifted it to her lips. It calmed her stomach immediately. He gave her water. For dinner that night, the last meal they would have for fourteen days, he boiled fish from the river and gave them its broth.

She had read many books about the rainforest, and had longed to meet it. She thought like this. That whenever you go someplace, you meet it, as if it were alive, which of course it is. Now she rested in her hut a few steps from the river and listened to this Being, the rainforest. Why had she ever thought it would be silent? It was the loudest thing she’d ever heard. Like trains and planes and the New York City subway at rush hour. It was so loud, in fact, it actually did remind her of New York. And she thought about the aptness of calling the city “the jungle.” Little did they know! Or perhaps they did. And every sound she heard that was not made by the vegetation, giant trees and tree-sized vines, groaning as they rubbed against one another, was made by creatures. Every Being was chatting, talking, whistling, singing.
Singing.
Lots of that. And everything was in motion. If she listened closely she could distinguish slithering, sliding, jumping, hopping, ambling, crawling, flying. The cry of a jaguar sent a ripple of fear through their little camp; she could feel it, even though their huts were spread out in the forest, out of sight of one another. It was so loud and offered with such proprietary authority she knew it would make most of them want to run. She thought about running, but where would she go? After a hot and dusty four hours to the river, in a grime-encrusted Toyota that seemed older than Japanese culture, it had taken them half a day on the river, to push off, paddle, and motor to the camp. The boat, an ancient dugout with a rusty outboard motor, had deposited them and left. The boatman promised to return in two weeks. The river was full of crocodiles and piranha. She watched the crocodiles slithering from river bank to river all along their route; though she’d read piranha ate you up only if you were already bleeding. Just her luck she’d tripped on a rock, in the seconds between changing boots for sandals to wear around the camp, and cut her big toe. Kate rummaged around beneath her mosquito net for her night bag. Finding it, she extracted crimson earplugs.