Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart_ A Novel - Alice Walker [36]
No, you don’t, said Kate. You hate having been forced to deal with it. Corn is innocent. It had nothing to do with enslaving you.
Remus looked down at her. Who’s the ancestor here? he joked.
We living have jobs too, she said, beginning to pull the silver hairs from the gleaming pearl-colored ear of corn in her hands. It did not surprise her that as she did this, the ear of corn became hard as a rock. Or rather, hard as dried corn. She knew immediately what she was to do.
She took the hand of Remus, a hand as dry and scratchy as the bark of a tree.
Here, she said, handing him the ear of corn. Eat this.
Remus made a face.
Go ahead, she insisted. Eat it.
He bared his gums.
Eat it, Remus.
I have nothing to eat it with, he said, even if I wanted to.
Oh ye of little faith, she said. Just see what you can do with it, to please me.
It’s so hard, he said, taking the ear of corn.
Yes, it is, she said.
She watched as Remus, only to please her, put the hard, dry ear of corn into his mouth. Blood smearing it as he did so, he clamped down, as if taking a bite. The kernels of corn immediately flew off the cob and attached themselves to his gums.
Remus, said Kate, beginning to chuckle at the astonished look on his face, you now have a full set of teeth.
He ran this way and that, looking for a mirror.
Here, she called after him. Here is the mirror. Look in my eyes.
When Remus looked into her eyes and saw himself, his beaming new smile, his happiness seemed to make him weak. He stumbled and began falling forward, into her. She felt the heaviness of him, his hard head, his broad shoulders, even his scratchy hands, passing into her chest. They seemed to be falling into a place just coming into view, far below them. She strained to see where they would fall, fearful they would be hurt. Though he was now inside her, she no longer felt his weight. And suddenly she saw clearly where they would land; it was her bed. Where she saw herself lying peacefully, sound asleep.
The Longer Yolo Kicked Back
The longer Yolo kicked back in his lounger on the beach, just in front of the pale beige resort hotel, the more he began to feel himself stuck on the surface of a façade. What was behind this tranquil site in which he had been so disturbed? he wondered. Each morning he rose, donned his trim green bathing trunks, took up his book—delighted to find himself enjoying a tale about goddesses and the tenacity of an ancient Goddess religion—and plopped himself, with a jug of lemonade at his elbow, in the shade of his beach umbrella. He could not forget the face of the young man with whose body he’d sat, however. He found his mind drifting as he gazed toward da locals’ section of the beach. He realized he knew almost nothing about Hawaii, beyond the reading he’d done before he came, whose sole intention had been to make of him a contented tourist; there was no way of guessing the beginning of the life whose ending he had seen. Thinking about it eventually forced him from his seat by the sleep-inducing sea, and into the bright red car he’d rented shortly after he arrived.
His car was red because he loved red. He was a Taurus, and every other Taurus he knew also loved red and owned a red car. In fact, he was often comforted while driving to see so many of his kindred charging down the road. Like bulls they liked to take off with a kick of the back wheels and to storm the highway as if the curtain of landscape glimpsed through the windshield were the cape of the matador.
Where was he going, though? He had no idea. Once away from the hotel the place didn’t even look like Hawaii. There were a lot of hardened lava flows that made the air hot and stifling, and after he’d passed those he came to yellowing grassy fields that looked like they’d been burned. A few minutes later he entered a forest of iron trees that resembled scraggly pines. Seconds later he was passing a cattle ranch. Patches