Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (14 page)

His Streaked Reddish Hair

His streaked reddish hair was beginning to reveal dark roots.

Each morning before sitting in circle Rick jogged through the jungle to a wide place in the river, ripped the towel from around his neck, his only attire, and plunged in.

Aren’t you afraid? they asked.

Nah, he said, I’ve been swimming with piranhas all my life. I just didn’t know it. He laughed. He had a ragged, feral look when he laughed because his teeth, polished to a high gloss, were uneven. A wispy mustache in which there were glints of gray belied his youthful look. Even in repose he appeared tense and driven.

After Kate had “seen” him he began to unwind, rather quickly, to her mind. And yet, when she spoke of this to Armando he reminded her it was the yagé. And that she, Kate, had needed to be present in the circle, alert, in order to do this particular dance that Grandmother required.

He laughed. I was getting a bit weary of Mr. Young Man Let Me Stay.

What do you mean? asked Kate.

He wants to stay young forever, said Armando. Like a Dracula or like these bats we have sometimes in the jungle. They drink so much blood! From animals, from people. And only because they have a fight with old age and with death, which of course will win. He shrugged. Mr. Young Man Let Me Stay, he said again, and chuckled. Grandmother has a message for him.

I don’t know how long it took me to realize my family’s wealth came from the sale of narcotics to black people, but I think it was a long time, he said one day as Kate and Lalika crowded into Lalika’s hammock for the afternoon siesta. Because the hammock was narrow they couldn’t actually lie down; they sat facing each other, their legs touching. Rick sat near them on a mat on the floor.

Kate and Lalika had taken a liking to Rick, who had bought a charango made of armadillo hide and sometimes in the afternoons attempted to play it. He had no musical talent whatsoever, which amused them. He had surprised them by saying their liking him was both predictable and uncanny. Puzzled, they had teased him and played with him and pursued the hidden thread that connected them to this rather scrawny, bespeckled, youthful-appearing man.

Black people always like us, he said, and that is why, in my opinion, it was easy to sell dope to them. My uncles have told me that they always had black friends, but after a while it was as if they didn’t know what to do with them. They were in America, not in Italy. They didn’t know how to do hospitality to strangers as they might have done at home. And at that point I think they remembered where to draw the line. That in fact there was a line. They could sell drugs to blacks but they were not themselves to be hooked on the stuff because if they became hooked on the stuff they couldn’t move up in American society and moving up in American society was what they wanted the most. After such a long sentence Rick let out a breath. To be respectable, he added.

So they hooked their black friends?

The friends were willing, said Rick. At least at first. Only later did they realize they had to hook others in their communities, they couldn’t push drugs to white people, in order to stay medicated.

I’ve never understood it, said Kate, to be medicated on drugs, heroin or cocaine or whatever, what is the appeal? Do people just want to get high, fly away from their troubles? Are they trying to knock themselves out? What?

Rick was thoughtful for a moment. They just want to feel normal, he said. The way they used to feel. They can still remember that feeling, you know, like a sense of home within, and they keep trying to get back to it.

I certainly understand that, said Lalika. Sometimes I feel like if I can’t get back to the wholeness of myself I’d rather be dead. I feel like being dead might even approximate that feeling, you know, of being at one with myself again, of being whole.

Kate took one of her feet and began to massage it.

Umm, said Lalika.

Kate chuckled. If you’re dead you can’t feel massage.

It’s true that some people, especially on cocaine, like to feel powerful and smart, if only for a few minutes or a couple of hours. Rick laughed. But that’s because for a moment sometime in their lives they felt this way naturally, and subsequently lost it. That feeling of being powerful and smart they had, maybe after winning a spelling bee in third grade, is the most “normal” and “at home” in themselves they’ve ever felt. They long to have it again.

There had been only two sessions with Grandmother left. During the circle before, Rick had acted out as usual, pretending to be an orangutan, grunting and rutting around the floor. Everyone else was quiet, immersed in their own journeys. Kate sat as usual completely still, as though she had also taken the medicine. Her eyes were open though. She watched as Rick rose from his seat, a low-slung, rope-backed, wooden chair like all the others, and, after studying it for a moment, deliberately turned it over. He then proceeded to sit on the floor and to attempt to sprinkle dust from the floor over his head. There was little of this because the earthen floor was covered with a thick straw carpet. He kept his right arm looped over his head, however, which gave him a distinctly simian look. Only it wasn’t amusing. He was disturbing the other participants who, distracted by the noise and movement of Rick, began to squirm in their seats. Armando and Cosmi tried during each session to work with Rick, to ease him along on his journey, a journey it was clear he was afraid to make. They did not wish to exclude him from the circle because, as they had explained to the group, what makes a circle sacred is that those who show up for it are the ones who belong in it. Casting anyone out, no matter how bizarre their behavior, drained the energy of the circle. However, Kate could see they were getting fed up with Rick. After singing to him and blowing smoke over him and finally sprinkling him with
agua florida,
Armando strode away in disgust. Rick was now starting to drool and to make motions that suggested other forms of regression.

Kate closed her eyes for a moment and let the image of Rick as he was crawling around on the floor before her merge with the cool, tense, intellectual Rick who always seemed to have control of himself. What she saw was an empty space. Rick was invisible. Or at least he thought he was.

When she opened her eyes he was on his knees, like a two-year-old, right in front of her. He was looking at her with a look that dared her to do something. Instinctively, she knew what it was.

Looking him directly in the eye she had said to him, enunciating very clearly:
I see you.

A shock went through his body, and the selves or pieces of selves that had internally been lying all over the floor coalesced.

She repeated:
I see you.

He made one last crawling turn around the floor as if to escape the radar of her gaze, but the circle was very small and eventually he was right in front of her again.

I still see you,
she said.

Rick stood up, looked self-consciously around the circle, and departed. He was gone all the next day.

It was my father who Anglicized our name, he said.
Richards,
he said, when he thoughtfully and quietly joined them again.

What was it before? asked Kate.

I’m embarrassed to tell you, he said. Not Corleone.

Oh, I remember them, said Lalika. Those people in
The Godfather.
They thought selling dope to black people didn’t matter because we’re animals.

There was silence. Kate took Lalika’s other foot and tugged at her toes.

I have a friend who had a heart attack from crack, Lalika continued. She said crack kept her from remembering.

Saartjie? Kate asked.

There was a long silence, as Kate stroked the sides of Lalika’s foot.

Yes, said Lalika, sighing. I told her to try to hold on, to remember Saint Saartjie. She paused. The people who got us out of jail kept wanting us to tell our story. So we could raise money to pay for the huge legal expense. We must have told it to a couple of hundred different groups and to television and the newspapers. How the policeman tried to rape us both. How I defended Gloria. How they beat us, locked us up. Raped us over and over, jailers and inmates alike. Filmed everything. Sold the film all over the world, as far as we knew. The sadness on her beautiful face made tears come to Kate’s eyes. Saint Saartjie disappeared and just the regular old Saartjie, dragged around for folks to look at and poke fun at, was left. She couldn’t stand it, Gloria said.

How did you?

I could still see Saint Saartjie in her even though she couldn’t see Her in herself. I felt like I was doing something to help all the Saartjies in the world. Lalika thought for a moment. Maybe it’s because I had a grandmother once. One time when I was very small, I remember I was living with a very old lady and they told me she was my grandmother. And even though she was old and sick and soon died she seemed to give me a strong shot of something.

Love? asked Rick.

People didn’t talk about love so much. I guess I would call what she gave me a real strong hit of
being thereness.

Presence? asked Kate.

Yeah. As long as she was around there was no such thing as being alone.

We lived in the whitest possible town while I was growing up, said Rick. With an English name to fit ours. In fact, it was a little bit of England, even eighteenth-century England, right on the coast of North America. Black people were not even welcome there to work.

Well, Kate said teasingly, you did your part. You dyed your hair red.

It just seemed to go with the landscape, said Rick. And with my mother’s carefully chosen and maintained ash-blond locks. It wasn’t supposed to be red, of course, but like so many things I got it wrong.

How did you find out? asked Lalika.

A predictable story, he said: Having gone to lily-white schools practically from birth, in which Jews, black people, and Italians were not present, at least not as themselves, I lucked out and went off to a college that had everybody. My roommate was a black guy. When I brought him home for a weekend I realized my parents were far too nice to him. So nice he would have had to be crazy ever to go back.

What niceness was this? asked Kate.

The totally phony kind, said Rick. The kind that said you’re such a different expression of life we will suffocate you with our overreaching acceptance.

I didn’t understand it. But then I started to date a woman of color. And they freaked. They started to tell me stuff about black people I’d never heard before. They seemed to know an awful lot about the drugs they used. And the crimes they committed while on them. They warned me not to go into their neighborhoods. This was shocking. I had no idea either of them knew anything about black neighborhoods.

And then I met one of my uncles who had not changed his name. I moved in with him, after running off from home. Under prodding and after teasing me about my hair, which was where I’ve always carried on any rebellion I felt, he said enough to start me to think. He introduced me to another uncle, and to cousins I didn’t know I had. Selling drugs to oppressed people was our family business, for generations. My family had sold the stuff for years, before they owned the hotels and restaurants, office buildings and elected officials, that I was familiar with. I started to understand why my hair would always be dark at the roots. Just as the Kennedys would always have those Joseph Kennedy teeth. I started to understand why to myself and often to other people I have felt invisible.

After the Last Circle

After the last circle, Missy proclaimed a breakthrough. During the first sessions, Armando and Cosmi had spent considerable time with her. Patiently encouraging her to get out of the way of herself. It was clear to Kate, sitting across the room from Missy, that she had every intention of being healed, but lacked the courage to let it happen. Her body grew as tight as a ripe tomato, and every orifice seemed closed: eyes, mouth, ears. She crossed her legs and became rigid. Nothing is coming into me, she seemed to say, and nothing is going out.

The more Armando sang—songs so lovely they made Kate weep—and the more Cosmi played his reed flute, the more Missy dug in her heels. Once in a while tears would leak from beneath her lashes and that would be enough encouragement for Armando and Cosmi to hover over her minutes longer.

Armando had told them all many times: It is hard to believe, but there is something inside of you, no matter how sick and fed up with your sickness you are, that does not want you to heal. It will actually fight you. Sometimes I think of it as a small boy, he said, and laughed. He is there having a good time at your expense and if you get well he worries there will be nothing left to do. No games to play with your sick body, no games to play with your mind. And this little boy will have to be
negotiated.
It was one of Armando’s favorite words. He will have to be
negotiated,
just like you would talk to a lawyer. If I am well, you must tell him, there will actually be lots more for you to do. More games for you to play, because we will be much stronger. If we are much stronger, we can go more places. We can have more fun. He is an odd little boy, this part of yourself that wants to control you while you are sick. And sometimes we are all charmed by him. That is why sometimes people who are not very sick will suddenly die. They have listened to his voice too long. It is very seductive.

One afternoon, as Armando was singing over her and Cosmi was fanning her with his fan, Missy seemed to die. Her rigid body became flaccid. Her head lolled to one side. Kate moved immediately to sit beside her, and when Missy woke up, Kate was looking down at her. Missy said: Oh, something’s gone.

Whew, said Kate. We thought you were.

Missy sat up, looked around at the circle, and seemed to realize where she was.

I’ve been away,
she said.

Welcome back, said Kate.

You have to understand that my grandfather, who incested me, was very small, she told them the next day. He was tiny for a man. And I think that had something to do with it. He was also a clown. That’s what he did professionally. He was the clown, especially at children’s parties. He was also the clown very often at home. My mom and I lived with him, because my father went off to the army and never came back. If he died there she never told me. She used to tell me God was my father and that that made me and Jesus siblings. I loved Jesus! Even today I think Jesus is really the coolest. And talk about hair. I thought it was just Cool City that his locks were always long. The only other person I knew who dared wear strange hair was my grandfather, so he was always right up there with Jesus Christ in my mind.

My grandfather, Timmy Wimmins, took care of us, and, while she worked, he took care of his little Squiggly Wiggly. Me. My mother didn’t find out what was going on until I was ten, when I was trying to stop playing with Timmy Wimmins and she wondered what had gotten into me.

Well, she said, frowning, when she found out what had literally gotten into me, she was not amused.

We left my grandfather’s house. But we couldn’t leave off feeling love for him. Except for what he’d done to me, he was the greatest guy.

Missy looked down into the river. It was swollen from a thunderstorm the night before. The glints of light across it matched the highlights in her brown hair.

I missed him terribly,
she said. And so did my mom. We were so used to him. To his jokes, to his pranks, to his dependability. I was used to him physically too, she added thoughtfully. I didn’t want him messing around my private parts anymore, she said primly, but I sure missed snuggling and cuddling and lying on the sofa on a rainy afternoon watching cartoons. And eating popcorn with walnuts and raisins!

My mom missed having him cook for us. Missed having him waiting at the door with a glass of wine in his hand for her. Missed never having to take the car to the repair shop or to get it washed.

She paused. In a way, my grandfather was our father and our husband.

The five of them were sitting together watching the river.

And did he incest her? asked Hugh.

I don’t think so, said Missy. But we never talked about it. He might have, when she was small.

I outgrew him, actually. At ten I was taller than he was.

They were silent for a while.

He used to tickle me. Make me laugh. He was so funny. He’d be wearing his clown clothes and his clown nose. And then the playing would run off into sex; but it was still like playing. He’d started playing with me so early I never knew there was a cutoff point. I was actually waiting for the tingle.

Kate laughed. The tingle?

Yes, said Missy. And if I tingled really well and enjoyed it a lot, he was so pleased.

Like after going to the bathroom by yourself when you’re little, said Lalika.

Exactly, said Missy. I think he thought good sex could be trained, like potty training. But when I understood what we’d done was wrong I was afraid to let myself tingle anymore. I couldn’t with boyfriends, I couldn’t with the man I married. It just felt like the wrong thing to do.

How did I learn it was wrong? I’m not sure I remember. It just started to feel wrong. And I noticed none of my friends ever talked about any tingling.

I couldn’t express to anyone, especially not my mother, how much I had enjoyed playing. Even in therapy I had the feeling of being perverse.

What happened to your grandfather? asked Rick.

He died, said Missy. He couldn’t be a clown anymore because his heart wasn’t in it. He missed us. I used to wake up at night crying thinking how much he must be missing us. We were his reason for living.

And yet, said Hugh, he took advantage of you. You were a child.

I was an infant when it started. Missy bowed her head.

I had such a hard time figuring it out. I took to marijuana like a duck to water. Always high. Then I switched to every other pill or potion you can name. Cocaine made me think I was smart enough to cope, but it was so expensive and my nose started to collapse.

Wow, said Kate.

But, said Missy, Grandmother told me to come and sit by the river. I sat here for most of the morning and part of the afternoon, looking at the water. What I see is that it has everything in it and it just keeps flowing. And look what else happened, she said, looking at them, you all have drifted down to the river to be with me. I promised myself, sitting here, that the first person who disturbed my solitude I would open to. That opening beyond where I was afraid to go would be the medicine for my cure.

Are we the first people you’ve told?

The scary parts? Yes.

Lalika took one of Missy’s hands. Kate took the other. Hugh and Rick placed their hands on her knees. Ah, said Armando, coming up behind them. Are we praying?

Yes, they said simply, inviting him and Cosmi, who walked behind him, to join them.

After ten minutes Missy opened her eyes wide, looked around at all of them, and asked: Did anybody else see dragons?

Gosh, I’m glad you asked, said Rick. When I finally let go I saw a dragon like the one in
Way of the Shaman.
I was reading it on the way down here; I think that might have had something to do with it.

I don’t think so, said Hugh. I haven’t read it yet, although I intend to as soon as I get home. I saw
humongous
dragons. Breathing fire.

Well, said Rick, mine breathed fire for a while and then water for a while, and then people. Streams of people just poured out of its mouth. He was thoughtful for a moment. We were being vomited up, our species, out of the depths of our own unconscious, is what it felt like.

Gee, said Missy.

Yeah, said Rick. And at that point, seeing all of humanity aimed at my head, I gratefully died.

It felt like I died, said Hugh. And I was afraid, right up until it happened. I had this feeling of foolishness too. Like, whatever possessed me to leave my cozy home in the good ole US of A to come to this godforsaken wilderness and drink this foul-tasting stuff handed to me by Indians who really should be giving me hemlock, if they knew what my people had done to them? But then when I actually started dying, I saw it wasn’t so bad. He lay back from the circle, his hands under his head, and looked at the sky. Being dead is profoundly peaceful, he said.

Well, said Missy, everybody told me I’d see dragons. But I just saw really big snakes. A couple of them, she added. Wrapped around each other.

But aren’t dragons snakes that get out of hand? asked Rick.

The creature I entered was so huge, said Kate, I couldn’t even tell it was a snake. Or a dragon. It looked like the side of a building. Except it was jeweled. Or beaded. I wonder if ancient people learned beadwork from their experience with this being’s skin. It was of breathtaking beauty. Anyhow, I lifted a flap, almost like opening a window, a beaded or jeweled window, and slid in.

And were you afraid? asked Missy.

I’d come so far, said Kate. Fear seemed beside the point. I guess I doubted I’d have much of an experience. And then, after a very full experience with Grandmother, she drifted away.

Really, said Lalika.

Yes, said Kate, that is why I stopped taking the medicine with you. By my third session with Grandmother the snakes or dragons or whatever they were were so small I could hold them in my hands. They were white and blue, and playful, like cartoon figures.

You have now experienced what humans thousands of years ago, to their great amazement I’m sure, also experienced. Such a long time ago we cannot truly imagine it. It is what humans have been experiencing for thousands of years since. Grandmother Yagé is a medicine of origins and endings, yes, Armando concluded, softly. That is why Grandfather reptile always appears.