Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart_ A Novel - Alice Walker [50]
For what did I see? My sister’s devotion, saving me, showed me myself. Someone worth saving, someone, in the female form that was my sister, who would save himself.
He paused.
There was no God involved, he ended thoughtfully, though the evangelicals have arrived in Australia with the same force they’ve arrived among the oppressed all over the globe. My sister embodied all that we thought lost. She had become the land, the sea, the freedom of the Dreamtime. Her behavior said: Though we have been taken from Her, yet I am Her.
He glanced around the circle, embracing everyone with his eyes. He looked at his friend. An impish look passed between them.
We’re off petrol, he said, smiling. But now we’re both inactive without coffee.
Everyone in the circle laughed.
Toward the Middle of Their Stay
Toward the middle of their stay in the jungle Armando and Cosmi invited them to dinner in the compound in which they’d received their very first meal. It was the place the two of them stayed. There was a handsome thatched dining area with a rough-hewn wooden table, a stove made out of stones and cement, and, in the corner of the ceiling nearest the huge trees that stood outside, there was a large iguana. This thick-waisted creature with its glittering eyes watched every move they made and caused everyone at the table to think of the varied critters they were sharing quarters with. Every hut, it turned out, had its nonhuman resident.
I have an iguana too, said Missy, only thank God it’s smaller than Godzilla there.
And does it watch your every move? asked Lalika.
I don’t think so, said Missy. It seems mostly to sleep.
This one thinks we’re television, said Rick, making a face at it.
Rick had been having the most trouble, Kate thought, of everyone. He could not let himself enter the world of Grandmother. He was fighting it tooth and nail. Instead of submitting, finding the “brick” or “scale of the serpent” that opened like a door into the experience, Rick turned aside. Turning aside at the crucial moment meant he was left in a kind of limbo. Laughing, crying, jumping around, disturbing everybody else’s trip.
What creature lives in your house? Kate asked him.
He thought. Moths, he said finally. Lots of moths as large as bats.
Wow, said Hugh. And they don’t bother you?
He shrugged: According to Carlos Casteneda, Don Juan said that moths are the ancestors.
Really, said Missy. But if they’re big as bats I don’t know if I’d want to see them.
There’s no choosing of who or what visits you when you come here, said Armando. It is only important that something does.
A gecko seems to be the only thing in my tambo, said Kate. But every time I say something or think something with any degree of certitude it makes that weird gecko sound.
It is agreeing, said Armando. Geckos always do that. You will notice that when you tell a lie or try to evade an issue it will not second you.
Everyone turned to Hugh.
I have not one bat but a family of them, he said. I just close myself up in my mosquito netting at night and hope their teeth are not sharp.
These are the creatures in whose homes you are living, said Armando. Think how patient they are with you.
During the second half of your visit notice who comes to visit you. By the way, he asked, has anyone been disturbed by the jaguar sounds?
I wasn’t so disturbed by the screeching right outside my hut, said Hugh, but I did lose some sleep listening to the men trying to chase it away. They were crashing through the jungle like a bunch of elephants.
Armando laughed. Usually a jaguar is a good thing, but sometimes it is the spirit of a sorcerer who is up to no good. That is why it was chased out. We did not send for it.
Where did you find chicken? asked Lalika, who was beginning to sleep so soundly that she heard nothing. Gingerly she lifted her spoon to her mouth and blew on the steaming broth.