Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart_ A Novel - Alice Walker [23]
And people had willingly taken this medicine for thousands of years! Repugnant as it was. How could she not love these people? After everyone, including Armando, had taken the medicine, there was a languid, hazy interlude. A feeling of: It is done. Whatever happens now, there will be no turning back. She particularly appreciated this time; it was like being in a small boat, all together, and knowing you would travel the length of the river together and hopefully reach your destination and with good fortune land in a place that welcomed you.
The New Yorker was the first to head for the bushes. Rushing out without his boots or his flip-flops, which lay beside the entrance. Soon they could hear him vomiting. That triggered one of the women, who went out, slowly, calmly, carefully bending over to place her flip-flops on her feet. Next, the man from Utah, his tall body slightly stooping going out the low entrance, his head brushing the palm fronds that formed the palapa’s top. And then the rest of them, one by one, left the circle. Some went to their holes and leaned over them. Others wandered out into the forest. She went to the forest. Found a tree that looked like an ancient woman, her head in the heavens, her feet in the earth, and, touching it lightly to ask permission, she threw up whatever poisons might be left in her body.
Returning, she noticed the light had changed. It was now late afternoon. They would be sitting for at least four hours before the mosquitoes began their nightly hunt. But this did not concern her very much, though she was allergic to insect bites and was already swollen from them. She had no mirror but she felt her eyes were almost swollen shut. She closed them.
The first time she had gone to visit Grandmother she had been fleeing the frightened animal aspect of herself. It seemed to her that humans were now in the position of deer or antelope or buffalo or polar bears. There wasn’t any longer a safe place for any of them. And yet she hated being afraid because fear was so paralyzing. She knew that if human beings, on a global level, gave in to the fear of being wiped out, disposable, like all the other creatures, they would never be able to think and feel their way out of their dilemma.
And so she had sat in a car crossing a long silver bridge, holding a new friend’s hand. This was a woman who seemed to be exactly where she was. In a state of near catatonic panic. Let’s go ask the trees! this woman had said, the first time Kate looked her in the eye and said: Hi, what’s happening?
Had He Been Shot?
Had he been shot, strangled, or drowned? There was no way of telling, from looking at the body. Yolo sat close to it, just where the warm moist sand met the hotter dry sand, and where apparently the body had washed up. There was no blood. He saw no puncture wound. No rope burn around the young man’s neck. He wanted to touch him. Cautiously, looking all about, up and down the deserted beach, he leaned over and lifted gently a strand of brownish-black hair that blew across the peaceful face. He had a feeling of fatherhood. Maybe even grandfatherhood. The boy was so young. So incredibly good-looking, wearing only threadbare shorts, a string of blue beads around his neck, and a silver ring in his right ear. Whatever troubles he’d faced in life were forgotten now, as Yolo wished they might have been while he was still alive.
He felt very present, waiting there beside the body. Present and useful. Drawing his legs up he sat in the lotus position and began to meditate. After half an hour he stirred, stretched his legs, and began to wonder if he were being tricked. But no, looking behind him toward “da locals’ ” parking lot, which was unpaved and partly obscured by scraggly trees,