Queen of Dreams (36 page)

How can I put into words the emptiness of being without my dreams after I’d tasted them again, after I’d used them to help people? I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. All day I paced up and down the threadbare carpet of the apartment, trying to think of a remedy. I knew no dream tellers in America. Perhaps there were none in this land that believed technology to be the cure for all ills?

Even if I could have given words to my problem, I could not speak them to my husband. He didn’t know I was a dream teller. I’d intended to inform him of it before we married, but at the last moment I shied away. Many people feared the dream tellers, many thought us unnatural. What if he did, too? I could not risk losing his love, I who had given up so much for it. I told him that my family was against our marriage, and that I’d left them for that reason. I told him I did not want to speak of them again, it was too painful. He respected my wishes and showered me with tenderness to make up for the love he believed I’d lost. How could I tell him now that he’d poured out his heart after a lie?

Besides, he did not have the power to help me. He had problems of his own. We had little money, so he was forced to work in addition to taking classes at the university. He came home each night exhausted, uncertain that he could make it in this new country that had glittered so beckoningly in the beginning. Still, he was a kind man, and he could see I was unhappy. He tried to distract me by taking me to restaurants, or to the movies, or to the seashore for the weekend—entertainments we could ill afford. They did no good.

In the weekly paper I read about a psychic who would, for a fee, answer questions about your future, offer solutions to your problems, and reconnect you with lost loved ones. My heart twitched like a beached fish that senses water nearby. I took twenty dollars from my husband’s wallet without his knowledge and called her for an appointment. But when I heard her voice on the phone, raspy from too many cigarettes, too many unslept nights of her own, I knew she couldn’t help me.

My days grew unbearable. I could focus on nothing but my lost ability to dream. I’d never paid my gift much attention before, but now my life seemed unlivable without it. In my misery, I blamed my husband for my loss. I quarreled with him for the slightest of reasons. The bafflement in his eyes only made me angrier. Thoughts of suicide filled my brain like rain clouds till everywhere I turned I saw only blackness.

It was at this time that the snake came to me.

I will not describe our meeting; some things should not be set down in a book, not even a book like this that no one might see, written in a language that few in this country can read. But this is what I learned from him: each time I had sex with my husband, or even slept in the same bed, my powers—already weakened by being so far from the caves—dwindled further. Soon they would die out altogether. If I wanted to remain a dream teller, there were two things I had to do—and soon.

It is your choice, the snake said. He glistened at the periphery of my vision, a raindrop on an ear of maize. He was the only thing of beauty in my dim and suffocating existence. I couldn’t bear to imagine him gone.

It is your choice, he said. But I knew I had no choice. I had to break off all ties with my husband. And I had to find a way to get back to the caves.

39

Rakhi

All night I can’t sleep. My brain feels hot and perforated, my eyes itch as though I’m coming down with an illness. Thoughts thud through my head like a herd of elephants. Random things my mother had said to me.
Using a hair dryer kills your brain cells. Don’t
go to bed holding on to a grudge.
Snatches of Sonny’s old music, and pushing out from behind the notes, his new music that I haven’t yet heard. A recipe for coconut chutney that my father made last week, down to its last detail, though I dislike coconut. Lists of clothes Jona was growing out of, household items Belle would need if she got married, security measures the U.S. airports should have taken. But these are not my real thoughts. My real thoughts are the ones I’m staving off by filling my mind, as fast as I can, with unnecessary chatter. When the light behind the blinds is the color of melted butter, I give up on rest.

Jona’s with Sonny, so I’m free to go to the eucalyptus grove whenever I please, but I keep delaying. I make breakfast, take a shower, throw a long-overdue load of clothes into the washer. I’m reluctant to go, afraid that the man in white will not be present. If he isn’t, I have no other way of reaching him.

Or is it that I’m afraid he’ll be there?

I’m hoping the grove will be empty, but it’s unusually crowded for a weekday. People are taking advantage of the sunshine, the mildness of this November noon. Students amble along the path, children run squealing after squirrels, dogs pull their owners along as they explore smells, lovers sit on fallen tree trunks, exchanging kisses as lovers have always done. A family has spread a tablecloth over fallen pine needles for a picnic. I peer over their blond heads to see falafel and salad, pita bread, pureed eggplant. How can everyone look so happy? Is there a magic shield around the grove that filters memory from the minds of those who enter here? Or is this how humans survive, shrugging off history, immersing themselves in the moment? If so, it’s a skill that has passed me by.

I go to the hollow at the heart of the grove where I last saw the man in white practicing his Tai Chi. There are no signs of him, but it’s quieter here. I sit on the ground, leaning against a fallen tree. There’s a ragged circle of sky overhead where the tops of the eucalyptus haven’t quite met. I look up at that. Inside me the thoughts I’ve been battling wait like submerged rocks in a river. Even one of them can make me sink if I crash into it. Immerse yourself in the moment, I tell myself. The brittleness of dry twigs under you, the scratchy bark behind your back. The sky is very pale, white rather than blue. It pulls at my chest until something pops, like a cork. And as though they were waiting for just this moment, the thoughts rush out. On TV a week ago, a preacher declared that homosexuals and abortion-rights advocates must bear the blame for the terrorist attacks: they angered God and caused his wrath to descend on America. Jona awoke crying. I was afraid to ask her why. She told me, anyway. She had dreamed of a frozen cave filled with bodies. I couldn’t say, like other mothers might,
Don’t worry, it’s only a dream.
The weight of her gift pressed on my chest like a slab of ice. I received e-mails saying no one should go to the malls on Halloween, that another major attack was planned on that day. Many of the waiters in the World Trade Center were undocumented workers. We’ll never know who they were, or their families. Other e-mails advised me to stock up on garlic and oil of oregano—they were antidotes to anthrax. A week after the towers fell, police found a pair of hands on top of a building nearby, bound with plastic handcuffs. On board the USS
Enterprise,
a sailor held up a bomb on which was printed, HIGH JACK THIS FAGS. Some nights I’m afraid to go to sleep. What else in the world will have broken by the time I open my eyes again? Other times I want only to sleep, dug deep into the ground like a badger, the cool, comforting mustiness of earth, which never changes, against my skin.

Often I find myself contemplating death. Until recently, I’d experienced it only as a theory. But now it had swooped into my life like a great gray owl, taloned, eyes shining through the night. It terrified me, but it was beautiful, too. Was that why some people rushed toward it in a frenzy of unfathomable joy, calling it the Savior of the Faithful?

And what about her, the woman closest to and farthest from me, who lived her life trying to save others and ended it driving her car (with her husband in it) over a hillside? It was no accident, I’ve grown sure of that. What transforming dream did she enter, that last night of her life? What was she seeking, for which death seemed the only gateway?

A dragonfly has lighted on my hand, large and metal-blue, with transparent gauze wings. It balances on my knuckle for a moment, its wings shining, the black beads of its eyes. I haven’t seen many dragonflies here. I feel curiously honored that it has chosen me for its way stop. I sit very still, hardly breathing, until it lifts off and spins toward the sky. I watch till it vanishes, and when my eyes come back to earth, I see the man in white.

He is in the hollow, in his usual place, but today his practice is different. He balances on his right leg, pulling the left leg back with his arm. His right arm is pointed up at the sky. His eyes are focused on a point on the horizon. Slowly, he extends his leg behind him, still holding on, until it is stretched taut. It’s a beautiful, powerful stance, perfectly balanced. I can’t take my eyes from it.

After a while, he relaxes his leg, brings it down to the ground, repeats the stance on the other side. I recognize what he’s doing as a yoga posture, though I don’t know the name of this particular one. I marvel, as I did earlier, at how naturally his body moves through the steps. I know I couldn’t do it.

He’s finished with the asana now. Before he starts another one, I stand up. The blood pounds so hard in my head that I grow dizzy. But inside me I’m sure, with a certainty I haven’t felt in a long time, that if I don’t take this opportunity to talk to him, I won’t get another one.

“Hello,” I say.

He turns, and I see that he is much older than I’d thought. His body had moved like a young man’s, but his face is weathered and lined. It is hard to tell his race—his skin is brown, but his eyes are a startling green. Is he the same person I saw last time, on that rainy morning? Perhaps many men come to practice in the grove. Several may wear white, at least some of the time. Perhaps the person I’ve titled
the man in white
exists only in my imagination, to be superimposed on other people when my subconscious feels a particular need. And with this last doubt I’m so embarrassed, I’m ready to apologize and leave.

“Hello,” he says, eyes crinkling in a smile. I like his eyes. They’re attractive, but not in a sexual way. Though there’s no sign in them that he recognizes me, they hold me as a wave holds a swimmer. They make me want to stay awhile, even if he isn’t
my
man in white, even if he knows nothing about my mother’s death.

I take a deep breath. I have the sensation that we’re engaged in an elaborate, dancelike game. The outcome of our encounter will depend on how well I play it. But what are the rules?

He waits, at ease, for me to speak.

A hundred questions crowd my mind. Do you drive a black car? Are you a policeman? Does your license plate say Emit Maerd? Is that your name, and what does it mean? Did you know my mother? Did she follow you over the edge of a freeway?

I say, “Is that yoga you were practicing?”

This time his smile brings a shimmer to his face. Somehow I’ve asked the right question.

“Yes,” he says.

“Would you show me an asana?”

“I will,” he says. He looks at me, brow creased, as though making a decision.

I follow him to a different, larger clearing. There are people all around us, but it doesn’t matter. Walking beside him, I feel as though the two of us are inside a bubble that no one else can break into.

“Do what I’m doing,” he says. He stands with his legs together and raises his hands above his head, stretching them all the way. He touches his palms to each other. I follow. The movement is simplicity itself, but new to me. I feel a slight tingling in my fingertips as I stretch.

He moves his legs apart, then turns to the right, pointing his front foot ahead. Bends the right knee and lowers his body. His left leg is stretched out behind him. He gazes upward at his joined palms.