The Sea of Light (47 page)

“Remember, Kenny?” she says now. And I know it is that—I don’t have to ask—I know it is that she’s remembering. She crosses herself. I close my eyes.
“Sagrada Maria, Madre de Dios.
Mary, forgive me. Do you know how I lived, Kenny? I promised the light. That somehow, every day, I would make it up to all the animals—I mean the ones on four legs, and the human animals, too. Because killing to eat, and to win—that’s the horror of the world.”

A tear slides down her face. And I know that it is my old friend Babe, for sure; that she may sound crazy, but is sane, totally sane. She takes my hand. I do not feel it, but see it.

*

Listen to me, Babe. When I leave, you’ll be the only one. Who remembers. And keeps the secret.

Don’t do it.

Tell someone.

I release you. Look at my eyes. Let them break the vow. Dry the blood. Set you free.

Yes, next to me. Turn my head. Pillow drool.

Eyes. Look at them. See.

“Remember the storm, Kenny?”

I raise eyebrows. The tube moves. “Not much. It’s all a blur. Like, gray.” And breathe again.

“For me, too. But sometimes I get these flashes—of what it was like, you know? And I know then that I know—I mean, know and remember it all, somewhere in here”—she flicks a thumb against her forehead—“or here”—and her chest. “But then it gets sort of gray again. I mean, it’s just not on the surface. This one guy in the hospital—this shrink, a Jewish guy—he hypnotized me a couple of times. So I got to where I could remember some stuff. Pretty weird.”

“Mind is weird,” I gasp.

“So’s living.”

“Mmmm, Babe. So is dying.”

Right, she says. She raises my hand, string-thin and shapeless, in both of hers. Twines her big, long, strong fingers with my useless, ruined ones.

“You want a massage, Kenny?”

She moves the tube. Couldn’t even feel it, I tell her. But she shrugs.

“I don’t mind.”

Oh, then, I tell her, go ahead. That would be kind.

*

Come here, Babe. I will tell you a secret. There is barely any Kenny left now. This I that was me is in a way of becoming. Part of something else.

It is hard to explain.

Watch.

Listen.

See. Hear.

*

The way of it—not what you think.

There is no bird’s-eye view.

No forest. Only trees.

No ocean. Only waves.

Broad map of it, no; map is not the territory.

It comes upon you like pricks at first. Then aching. Then swells of pain. Until this constant anguish of muscle and flesh. And fire in bone.

But the fire gets cold, does not diminish. Cumulative ice. A deep, deep freeze. Until you are frozen in the pain. And the pain is your life.

Scars, accumulate.

Love, accumulates.

All add to the weight of it. And weight brings you down.

But in the moments racing by, that is not what you know.

You think, only: in this second, I suffer.

Not: I am dying now.

*

Sometimes, she tells me later, I get this feeling that I’m inside a dream, you know?

I laugh. Gurgle recognition into the tube, which distorts it to a sob. But she looks into my eyes, sees the laughter there, gives me a smile while her own eyes brim tears.

“I feel like it’s all some weird, wrong dream. But at the same time I know—I know I’m never going to wake up. I mean, dream or not—this is
it.”

I wink.

“Your legs got really small, Kenny.”

So did my dick. But I don’t say this.

“And your feet.”

She lifts them, one by one. One by one, gently pulls each toe. Faintly, far off, I hear them crack. Release. Odd, not to feel that. Yet there they are—small, translucent, puffy, utterly unused, toenails rimmed with blue, turned up facing me from the bottom of the bed. They are mine. Were. Belonged to the body of a young man once. Blond hair dispersed along the thin, thin ankles. Before a major meet, I would shave all that off. I would clean-shave my chest. My neck, and my arms.

Or, as Sager called it, get clean and mean.

Babe hated that.

He wants to make us infants, she’d say.

Liz would wink at me. Cuddle her head against a belly or a thigh. Oh, just chill, Babe! He wants to make us
fast!

And, like little girls, they’d laugh.

Tears slide out of my eyes. She strokes them away.

“It’s all right, love. Look, Kenny, I’ll tell you a secret. I know that you loved me. And I know how much. So nothing else matters, okay? Don’t have regrets.”

I close my eyes. Time passes. Silence. Open them, tearless.

“Kenny, I have to tell you. I don’t know why, it’s just been on my mind that maybe it would make you happy, or something. See, I fell in love again.”

Raise my eyebrows. Twist mouth away.

“Babe, that’s great.”

“Sometimes, you know, I even feel good.”

“Right,” I gasp. “Better and better.”

Eyes dull for a second. For a second, then, ears go dead. Blurred vision, in a soundless room. And I know, I know, it quickens now. Continues. Manifestation is fading. Tonight, finish: will vanish.

Babe?

She takes the tube away.

Babe, listen:

“Thanks for the visit.”

The tube comes back. I breathe again.

She cries, long, gently, muffled. I watch, helpless.

Twist my mouth away.

“Babe? Let me hold you.”

Slowly, gently, she pushes cables out of the way, falls right next to me on the bed. I watch her with my eyes. See her refuse to turn away. Set her head alongside mine right there, right on the pillow. Tentatively at first, then with great affection, rub her fingers along my chin, and cheeks, and forehead. Softly, caress my eyebrows. My nose.

I still swim, she whispers. Kenny, I still do. Only, not to be great any more. Not really. Just to be human.

She closes her eyes next to mine, falls asleep. I can hear the sounds of her breathing fading in and out of my ears like a shell held up, imitating the sea.

*

Babe, listen: It starts from the outside in. Death, I mean.

Mine started in the hospital, when I woke up and could not feel fingers or toes. Since then, the lack of sensation has spread, slowly, slowly, inside of me. From toes up. From fingers in. The machines just beep stability. They cannot show this, the real truth: that, lying here, as usual, I am actually traveling far away; and, this time, whatever is left of the young man Kenny will not return.

Babe, listen: This isn’t Kenny talking, but a collection of voices into which, bodiless, without personality, the entity who in this life was called
Kenny
will fade.

The young man cannot say this.

So look in his eyes.

We are there, Babe. All of us, unbetrayed, unbetrayable. You saw this once before, while you were dying in the sea. And, because still trapped in body and mind of personality, you imagined it in visual form: a cloud—of light. That hovered close—closer than you imagined seeing it—as close as you are to yourself. For you were not separate.

Kenny, you whispered, do you see it?

He did, but could not reply.

Take me, he told us. Open Hand, he said, dreaming, Open Hand Boy. With every fault and deception. Every action. Every loss, and win. Here, in the water, I am ready. Take me. I loved her. And others. Now, I have given up. Now, I just love.

And there, in the sea, we began.

But you—you were not dreaming. You could still imagine. That you saw with your eyes. Awake. Fighting. Trying to swim.

Kenny, do you see it?

You were enchanted. Also, afraid. And reached toward the light you thought you saw, anyway.

I want, you said.

To live.

We enveloped you. Considered taking you, then. To ease your suffering. To bring you back home. So, again, the journey began. Out of the sea of water, into the sea of light. From which you are not separate, except in the falsity of appearance. Weightless, you traveled, with the light your only covering. Up into the nothing funnel, spiral female male conch shell of the origin and the continuance.

You laughed. Cried. I want, you said. So much. To live.

Then the journey stopped.

Go back, we said.

You protested. Became the personality Babe again. Saying, Forget it. I
like
being weightless. I mean, this is cool. I can do anything I want.

Yes, we told you, that is why.

Why, what?

Why you have to go back. You aren’t ready.

When you’re ready, truly and purely conscious, a part of desire-less love, non-separate, you will know. And we’ll be there.

We’ll be you.

Because there is no difference.

But, first, you must know it.

I want, you said. Sobbing.

We conferred. That’s it, we decided. It she wants it so damn much, let her have it.

So we threw you on back. Spit you out, spinning wildly, from the whirlwind funnel of light, into the thrashing air, gray wind, and your broken tortured woman’s body that clung to life, that tried to swim, into the water and sea.

*

When she wakes up, the air-conditioning is off. My mother has come in and opened up the window. You can smell the faint whiffs of the flowers she’s planted. You can hear cars go by, once in a while; once in a while hear a plane take off, far away, or dog bark, or kid clatter by on a bicycle. Pastel gravel surrounding palm trunks on each lawn. The sun is going down, amid long flat clouds, a vivid purple light in the sky. I can sense but not see my parents at the door. Soon, soon. The doctor will come. And lawyers. Paramedics. Signed releases. Unplug the plugs. Then it won’t be long.

For this I am ready like for a big meet: shaved down, focused, drugged just right, all my homework done. Excited and afraid. As much an athlete as ever.

Almost time, now. Yes. I start to shake, to sweat, with terror, with relief. She wipes my face with her hand.

“Look, Kenny. Whatever you want. I mean, I know about tonight, and if you want me to be here when they turn all this shit off, I’ll be here.”

Raise the eyebrows. Tube removed.

Final words of the entity Kenny:

“No thanks. Me alone.”

And:

“I love you, Babe. Now go away.”

La Bruja

(
TIA CORAZÓN
)

Black girl, they said, you’d better run. Run now, run girl, or be burned.

They said: Fire in the sugarcane field. It will take down your house. Chickens, goats, die screaming. Better run.

I smelled it before I saw it—the burning, and melting of air. Stood in the open doorway. Made a black and pink fist of my hand, shook it in the direction of the smoke. Saying come now, find me if you can. This black girl will not burn. Here is one with scarred lip and crazy eye, cheated at the altar by that son of a whore, who doesn’t care about the curling of the pain, frying of the flesh, skin gone up in ashes, mingling with the clouds. Me, I survive pain. And I don’t run.

Animals went insane. Smelling the rot, the heat, before it came, before the sound of the crackling fields. Pulled tethers from deep-dug sticks in the ground. Ran circles around the house, bleating, screaming. Chickens knocked themselves dead trying to escape through the roof of the coop, collapsed in dirty heaps of feathers; cats disappeared, dogs with ears half chewed off whined, pleaded.

Corazón, they said. You with the evil eye.
Como una bruja.
Here’s your choice: Sacrifice for that son of a bitch Guillo, that lady’s man, suffer for the glory of your soul like a saint; or run away, and live.

Stupids, I told them—without words, in my belly. Stupids. I won’t run. But I will live. Watch me.
Como una bruja.

And to the fire I said, Come and find me. Twist me. Take the broken pieces of this heart. Ghost God, sugarcane gods, gods of all the animals, in mountains, and thunder, and the sea, Santa Barbara and the rest of the Seven Powers, I am too hurt to be afraid any more, I give myself to you, I am broken, take all these pieces as your own.

People sped away screaming, in flat-tired trucks, on donkey back, horseback, driving goats and pigs before them, holding sacks of food, of cloth, holding children’s hands, holding chickens and ducks by the legs, upside down, pressing kerchiefs to their mouths and noses against the suffocating smoke.

Somewhere burst the tank of an old army truck, gasoline exploding. It lit the pale sky like celebration. Rotting wood houses caught, roofs collapsed, trapped animals screamed, one by one the structure of the town fell, withered to black ash, fodder for a hundred bonfires. I stood there, brokenhearted, waiting. The bad eye closed. I fell asleep.

*

They said that I came walking, later, barefoot, flesh hot as a clay oven but unburned by the fire, dress in blackened rags around me, through the leveled fields of cane. That my hands reached before me, arms stretched, in a daze, like they were looking for something. And scarred lip twitched. Crossed eye rolled. That a big black vein along the side of my neck popped close, close, to the surface, pulsed, beat in and out with the beating of my heart. So that, seeing me, some child said look it’s the witch,
la bruja,
coming out of the fire. Everyone was scared. And when I reached for them—for comfort, for touching—each body shrank away.

Then someone drove up, in a sparkling new American car. They came from the west. Screeching out of the sunset, like a big, fierce comet crashed to earth. From it stepped a starry creature—a devil, maybe, or angel, or maybe even the son of God. This car was gleaming silver and white, the sides of the tires were white, and the metal on it glowed. It was like a new ship, skidding into port. I reached toward it. Out stepped a man. Dressed in white. Wearing gold. That weak unmarried son of an overseer, that pale feeble dandy of a man, Antonio Delgado, in his ruffles and his rings. The metal jewels blinded me. I stumbled in his way.