Reincarnation (27 page)

"You have more than you think," she told him. "Get me one of those registration forms. I think I will register to vote, after all."

Then one day while he was playing guitar for her in the

272

living room and singing her one of the songs he'd written, a car came up the road and

made a quick and abrupt stop.

Ducking from under his guitar strap, Mike stepped to the window and pushed the lace

curtains aside.

Louisa was already locking the doors and windows.

"It's okay," he told her. "It's Dave from our group."

Louisa followed Mike out onto the porch. "Come quick," Dave said breathlessly. "Ray's been arrested. He's been seeing a local black woman and they tried to sit in the Whites Only

section of the movie theater."

"Ray?" Mike questioned.

"Yeah," Dave said. "We can't let either of them stay in jail overnight. I don't want to think about what could happen. They've set a six-thousand-dollar bail on each one of them."

"Twelve thousand!" Mike cried. "I can call home, but I don't think my parents have that kind of money."

"We've started a collection, but we don't have nearly enough," Dave told him.

"Just a minute," Louisa said to Dave. "Let me talk to Mike inside." Taking Mike's wrist, she went back into the house. "Listen to me," she said. "I have given away just about all that's left of my inheritance for reasons which I can tell you later. But I do have one thing of value

left which I kept for sentimental reasons."

She opened the lower door of a china cabinet to reveal a safe. With deft fingers she opened

the combination and

273

pulled out a shiny wooden box. Inside was a thick collar studded with eight glistening

emeralds. "You take this downtown to O'Hara's Jewelry Store. Mr. O'Hara knows what it's

worth. I had it appraised there. He will want to buy it from you right away. He's told me so

many times."

She wrote the address of the store on a piece of paper. "I'll call to tell him you're coming so he doesn't think you stole it," she said, handing him the paper.

"I can't take this," he objected.

"It is my dharma to give it to you," she said. "Go."

Mike raced into the police building behind Dave. A crowd of the volunteers poured in

behind him.

"We have the bail money for Raymond Rogers and Bernadette Towers," Dave shouted at the

desk sergeant. "We demand that they be released immediately. If either of them has been

harmed we will bring a lawsuit that will bankrupt this county!"

"Hold your horses. They're okay," the sergeant muttered, eyeing them all with disgust.

"Come here and fill out the paperwork. You're going to have to send somebody else in to

get Miss Towers. You have to send a colored to go in through the colored door."

Dave turned to Mike. "Ernie Long is signing up voters down at the school auditorium," he told him. "Tell him to come down here to get Miss Towers."

"Okay," Mike agreed. He counted out the money he'd

274

gotten from Mr. O'Hara. Ernie Long was a good choice. He was seemingly fearless. He could

negotiate any problem that might arise.

Mike hurried out of the police station. The sun blazed overhead, blinding him. His arm

was raised to shield his eyes as he stepped off the curb.

He never saw the speeding car that rounded the corner and tossed him into the air.

275

I am flying. My body drops to the ground ... but I keep going, light as a feather.

I don't bother to watch the commotion below. I need to get back to Louisa.

When I soar over her house, she is sitting on the roof. She reaches her arms up to me. She is

young again like when I first saw her sing at The Panther: Isis, the nicest on the Nile.

I remember now! I remember! Everything she told me is true!

Below, on the porch, her older self sleeps in her rocking chair. Her face is content.

I sit beside her spirit on the peak of the roof.

My arms are around her. We kiss -- such a deep, long kiss.

How could it be that I didn't recognize my heart's true love the minute I saw her? What took

me so long?

Down on the porch, someone coughs.

Sliding to the edge of the roof, I bend forward to see who it is.

276

Older Louisa has awakened, not dead as I had believed! She rubs her eyes and slowly pulls

herself from her rocker.

Frantically, I check the roof.

My young Louisa is no longer there!

I slide down to the ground beside her as she hobbles toward the road. "Louisa!" I cry. "What happened?"

I know what happened.

Her body rallied and called her spirit back.

I should be glad but I'm not. For a moment I had my love and now I don't. I'm disappointed

and angry.

"I'm here," I say desperately. She turns toward my voice, almost hearing it, though not quite sure what is calling her. Is it the boll weevils rustling the grass, the sweltering buzz of heat

rising off the road?

Louisa stands in the dusty road, leaning on her cane, waiting for me to drive back, to return

to her. A hot breeze flattens her skirt against her legs. She knows something is wrong. It's

on her face.

Out in the middle of the cotton field stands an angel.

I know I must go. To remain as a ghost would be to witness more sorrow, bear more

loneliness than I can stand.

"Good-bye, my Louisa. You have shown me how it is. I know now that you have been right

about the past lives, about everything. Forgive me for thinking you were

277

a little crazy. It didn't matter to me, anyway, if you were. I loved you more this time than

ever before. You are my dharma, my dear one."

The angel is beside me. Like a Great Bird he rises, taking me with him.

278

New York, the present

Samantha Tyler shut her eyes and let the music on her iPod flood her head. Outside the

moving school bus, the buildings slowly increased in height as they approached Manhattan

for their senior geology class outing to the American Museum of Natural History.

She wished she could have skipped school this Friday. Her audition for Juilliard's college

music division was tomorrow. It would have been good if she could have practiced singing

her tryout songs or even rested. But this trip was required by her science teacher, so there

was no way out of it. A tap on her shoulder made her jump. "You were singing along with

the iPod again," her friend Zoë' said from the seat beside her. "Loud." Zoë zipped up her yellow Abercrombie hoodie and fluffed her long red curls. "I have to

talk to you. It's serious."

"What?"

Zoë lowered her voice. "You told me last night that you were thinking of breaking up with

Chris, right?"

"Right." Samantha ducked lower in the seat so no one would see they were talking. "Don't tell anyone. I don't want Chris to find out before I talk to him. That would be nasty."

279

"I won't," Zoë assured her. "Are you sure you want to do it? He
is
captain of the football team, after all. I mean, he's hot."

"He's a great guy, too. But... I don't know. He just doesn't get me," Samantha said. It was a hard-to-explain difference that she couldn't figure out. Chris was nice but somehow they

just didn't connect.

"Maybe you don't get him," Zoë suggested.

"It could be," Samantha admitted.

"Have you definitely made up your mind to break up with him?"

"No. Why?"

Zoë scowled. "Oh. I was just thinking that if you had decided that you wanted to break up

with him, you could do it today while we're at the museum. Then, if he didn't take it well,

you could give him the slip for the rest of the day and it wouldn't be as awkward as if you

broke up with him on a regular school day."

"True," Samantha agreed. "Why is this so important to you?"

"You're my friend," Zoë replied.

Samantha eyed her suspiciously. Zoë wanted to go out with Chris. Samantha had suspected

it for a while and now she was sure. She couldn't say she wouldn't mind. It would be weird

to have her friend go out with her ex-boyfriend. But it wouldn't break her heart, either. "I'll let you know what I decide," she told Zoë.

280

"I think you really like that new guy, Jake Suarez, more," Zoë suggested.

"Do you mean the one who won the archery tournament last Saturday?" Samantha asked.

Zoë poked her. "You are so full of it. You know exactly who I mean. I saw you watching him

in the cafeteria the other day."

"I don't know him," Samantha said. "He's not in any of my classes. But he seems nice and he's cute."

"I knew you liked him," Zoë said.

Samantha swiveled in her seat and looked at Chris sitting at the back of the bus with his

football buddies. He noticed her and waved.

She returned the wave and intentionally caught a glimpse of Jake as she turned back

around. He was plugged into an MP3 player and reading at the same time: a beat-up

paperback called
Siddhartha.

Zoë was more right than she knew. Jake was new to the school and from the first instant

Samantha saw him he'd gotten to her. She knew exactly when it was. He'd been out on the

archery field all alone, probably practicing for the tournament in which he eventually took

first place.

She had stopped her trek across the field, riveted by the picture he made: glistening dark

curls, straight strong back, his arms pulled back, and his total focus on the target in front of

him.

He hit the bull's-eye in the center of the target.

281

In that moment she was completely gone; he was all she could think about from then on.

Her relationship with Chris went flat almost the next day. It wasn't fair to him, she knew. But

her attraction to Jake was fiercely undeniable. It didn't feel like she had any choice in the

matter.

"You're right," she told Zoë. "I'm going to break up with Chris."

"Would you hate me if I ... you know," Zoë asked, staring down at her hands folded uneasily in her lap.

"You like him, don't you?"

Zoë nodded.

"It would be okay with me," Samantha said.

Looking up at Samantha, Zoë smiled. "You're sure?"

"It's no big deal. Chris and I have only been going out for a month. I think you and Chris are more suited for each other, anyway."

They went through the Midtown Tunnel into Manhattan and drove uptown and through

Central Park until they came to the museum. The majestic building with its columns and

wide steps struck Samantha as oddly familiar, but she couldn't think of why that might be.

They went into the main entry with its colossal, towering dinosaur skeletons and paid the

entry fee, which included access to the planetarium, all halls and special shows, and the

IMAX movie playing that day:
Comets
--
Crashes and Collisions.

Samantha asked Chris if they could talk even before

282

they went into the main part of the museum. "I don't know how to say this," she began.

"You want to break up," he said.

"You knew?"

"It wasn't hard to tell when you didn't even want to sit with me on the bus," he explained.

"Sorry," she said, wrinkling her forehead. "You're great but I just think we're real ... you know

... different."

"Yeah, we are," he agreed. "Okay. See ya."

"See ya." Samantha watched as he ran after a group of his friends, thumping one of them on the back in greeting. She breathed a sigh of relief. That had been easier than she'd

expected.

Looking around the hall, she realized none of her classmates or teachers were still there. Not

wanting to be on her own the whole day, she hurried into the museum.

The place was enormous! Where had all the others gone so fast? She grabbed a floor

plan and a schedule of museum events from the stack on a stand. There were certain places

they were required by their teachers to go that day. The kids had probably all raced to those

spots first to get them out of the way.

She hurried through the shadowy, high-ceilinged halls lined with glassed-in life-size

dioramas of different taxidermied animals posed as though they were in their natural

habitats. The murals in the background made the scenes appear amazingly lifelike.

283

Up ahead, she spied Jake Suarez standing alone, peering into one of the cases.

How perfect was this ? When would she ever get another chance to talk to him alone this

way, under such a totally plausible pretext?

With her heart beating like accelerated time, she approached him.

"Thank God I found somebody from our school," she said, coming up alongside him. "I'm Samantha. You're new in school, aren't you?"

He turned to her and his hazel eyes were unfocused, as though she'd disturbed thoughts

that had taken him very far away. "Yeah, I'm Jake. Hi."

"Do you know where everyone went to?" she asked. "It's like they disappeared."

"I think they all rushed up to the Hall of Gems to see that emerald show we have to report

on. I was on my way, too, but I stopped to look at this display."

Inside the glass, a stuffed bison grazed tranquilly. The rest of the herd had been painted

into the mural behind the bull. "What a beautiful animal," he remarked.

"A lot of people would think he was ugly," Samantha pointed out. "But I see what you mean."

"They have drawings of them on cave walls that are still around today."

"So are we," she mentioned.

He looked at her sharply, as though startled by her words.

284

"People, I mean," she clarified. "We're still around, too. What did you think I meant?"