Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart_ A Novel - Alice Walker [31]
Lalika, when she glanced at her, was weeping.
With a sigh, Kate turned her face away.
Do you think this stuff will help me? asked Lalika. Almost in a whisper. Kate had never heard a voice so forlorn.
You mean Grandmother? asked Kate.
Yeah, yagé. Lalika attempted a smile. Grandmother. Hmmm. I like that better, she said.
Kate knew a bit about Lalika’s life because she was, in some quarters, infamous. Lalika was a murderer.
What is the thing you feel you need the most help with? asked Kate.
Lalika was quiet for so long Kate thought she hadn’t been heard.
I need to feel like me again, said Lalika. And burst into tears. I miss myself so much, she said, her face as contorted as a child’s.
At first Kate stayed still, reflective, on her towel. Then she sat up and hugged her knees. It was hard to let Lalika weep alone, but she let her continue for several minutes. Yes, she thought, just be alone with it. Feel the fucking pain to the core.
When the racking sobs began to subside Kate roused herself, went over to the river with her towel, and brought it back sopping wet. Wringing it out a bit, she draped it over Lalika’s head which was hot from the sun and sweaty and ashen from crying.
Lalika grabbed the ends of the towel gratefully, tucking them under her chin.
Here we are in the middle of absolutely—who the hell knows where—
And, continued Kate, two of us have managed to be here.
Two of us are here. Lalika repeated this as if to herself. However, the thought seemed to arouse more sorrow and she began to cry fresh tears. In fact, she began to wail.
It seemed to Kate, as the wailing went on and on and began to reverberate through the jungle—and “jungle” was exactly what this rainforest was, impenetrable off the narrow trails they walked—that it had the curious effect of rousing the vegetation. That is to say, she felt as though the trees and bushes of the forest awoke. There was an attentiveness in the air. It was certainly not a human attentiveness, no one else was around. And yet it felt like Lalika’s wailing had attracted a crowd.
Hmmm, she said to Lalika. Do you get the feeling we’re not alone?
Lalika, whose head by now rested against Kate’s shoulder, wiped her face with the rapidly drying towel, looked toward the river, listened intently to the humming sound of insects, and said, abruptly sitting up:
I feel so much better. Surprised.
Kate looked down at her. Lalika was in her mid-thirties, a common, ordinary black woman no one would look at twice on the street. In this setting she looked incredibly beautiful. Her skin resembled the earth, her hair looked like the trees. Her eyes had the deep light of the brown river.
You’re really beautiful, said Kate.
Naw, said Lalika.
Yeah, said Kate.
They sat together, shoulders touching. The mosquitoes began to sound like airplanes. Lalika shared her insect repellant but the critters licked it off like icing before plunging their needles into them. They were so big and healthy killing one made Kate feel guilty.
They gathered their things and ran.
Thinking about yagé and how it no longer worked on her, Kate remembered a talk she’d heard by Ram Dass. He’d been a devotee of LSD and had thought it the most powerful tranformative substance in the world. He’d taken a lot of it to India the first time he went, thinking he’d try it on some of the gurus there. Kate appreciated his irreverence. He’d met “Baba,” as he called the tiny Indian who became his guru, and within days Baba had asked about the “medicine” he’d brought. Ram Dass had never thought of it as that. Surprised that the old man even knew he had brought something, Ram Dass decided to give him a dose of LSD large enough to disorient several elephants. At last, he thought, I will be told what LSD really is. He hung around the tree under