Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (15 page)

A Person Is Visible

A person is visible only when it is possible to perceive what sustains him, said Armando to Rick. His nourishment, so to speak. Your nourishment—the food you ate, the education you received, the trips you took, the houses you bought, and the clothes, even the shoes, you bought—was kept secret. Your parents did not tell you that your shiny teeth were paid for by those that fell from the gums of drug addicts.

They thought to protect you from the suffering of the world by making sure you did not know about it. Yet it was the suffering of the world that was feeding you.

Their teeth fall out?
asked Rick.

Yes, said Armando. The drug addict does not always care to eat. Or to brush. Flossing is out of the question.

You are very thin, he continued. But not invisible altogether. He paused, seeming to wait for Rick’s response.

Rick looked down at his hands and then away from them toward the river.

I’m thin because I binge, he said, on all the food I can possibly stuff into my body, and then I purge.

So, said Armando after a moment, you are an old hand at throwing up.

Yes, said Rick. Even before I knew the family secret. I felt instinctively that we had too much of everything: food, clothes, money. And my parents, especially my father, was always urging me to take more. Eat! Drink! Buy! That was the only time he sounded Italian. Even
Roman.
Even
imperial.
He laughed. Yes, he continued, chuckling, he looked just like those Roman emperors in the movies, setting off to conquer, to eat up, the earth. Devouring everything seems to be in our genes.

And then when I knew . . . I didn’t know what to feel. I realized I felt nothing. And my life went on as always. Nothing changed, even though I now knew something so shocking about my family, our history, and myself; people still treated me as if I were special. Our driver still tipped his hat when he opened the door of the car for me.

But then, one day, I noticed he wasn’t really looking at me—to see me—when he did it. I saw it was my overcoat and hat, my well-polished boots and tailored suit, he recognized. Who I was myself he had no clue and didn’t care about it either. I could have been a mannequin. A blow-up doll, he said, and laughed.

Seriously, he said to Armando, since coming to America all of us “ethnics” who could pass for white people did so. We dropped as much as we could of whatever heart, soul, or rhythm made us unique. It’s curious now that everywhere you look there are white men, but in my view most of them are invisible. We don’t look at each other, you know. Not anymore. We’re afraid someone will have the poor taste to ask: What is your power source?

And certainly you don’t want ethnic studies taught in school, said Kate, because that is exactly the question that is asked.

When a foreigner from a poor country visits America, said Armando, he feels he is moving among shadows. Shadows with teeth! He laughed. Not even the shadows of nature. We have not known why this is so. Because in movies from America that we have seen the white man’s face has filled the entire screen. His troubles have seemed real enough to make him more like us. We see he has suffered. But when we get here, he is so stiff! Besides, though we have seen so much of white men, they do not appear to see us.

They dare not, said Rick, shrugging. Any dark-skinned or poor person is likely to be from a place we have harmed.

The more powerful the powerful appear the more invisible they become, said Armando. This used to work differently than now. In the old days it was said that the powerful merged with the divine and the divine was all that one saw. But now the powerful have merged with the shadow, really with death, and when you encounter them they are really hard to see. Even for a shaman. Sometimes one thinks: There is a woman who sleeps with this invisible person, every night. Of what does she dream?

What is the medicine for this invisibility that white men have? asked Rick. An invisibility they are spreading to others.

Armando looked for a long time in the direction of the river, and yet his gaze seemed to hover just above it, at the edge of the trees.

In my opinion, he said, after a while, the only medicine that cures invisibility among the powerful is tears.

There was a long silence. Eventually Armando continued. Think of your presidents, he said. And how you only learned to see them, truly see them, after they died. Because then much of their true nourishment could at least be hinted at. Think of how they looked on television as they calmly ended the lives of nations and people, small children, rivers, donkeys, and goats.

He paused.

It would have been better for everyone if, instead of calmness, they gave their orders weeping.

Crocodile tears, said Rick, with a snort.

Perhaps, said Armando. Besides, they were not hired by the people who control them to feel. Only to do.

I don’t feel, said Rick. Or, I feel only enough to get by. I married the woman of color I dated in college, and she did the feeling for both of us.

And sleeping beside you, said Armando, of what did she dream?

That I could not possibly be so unfeeling. It was so odd to her she never believed it. She thought something, some horror story, some experience of sadness, would shake me to my core and that in that core would be just what you are speaking of, a bucket of tears. It’s never happened.

Are you so attached to your toys? asked Armando. You are a rich man, no?

Very rich. I have the money that should have built hospitals, should have built schools. Should have fed and educated generations of children who ended up in prison. My wife used to remind me of this, before she bailed out.

And? said Armando.

Nothing, said Rick. I have lots of stuff but basically I live in one room.

Does it face the water? asked Armando.

It does, said Rick, surprised.

All your tears are calling you, said Armando, touching his knee.

You Must Live: A Future Consequence

You must live for at least two years in space,
said Grandmother.
It will take at least that long to make you positive that space is where you have always lived. There are people who think they must travel through the air to reach space, but that is because they do not understand. You are born into space, out of space, space is your home forever. Earth is like a dust mote in the cosmos. An interesting, even fascinating, dust mote. But a dust mote. It is like a raft on a river and the river is space.

She told me I must live in space for two years, Kate said to Yolo. I don’t understand that at all. How am I going to do that?

Yolo smiled at her. Grandmother has a sense of humor, he said.

The next time she returned from a trip she thought she’d been brought to the wrong address. Opening her gate, blinking in surprise, she saw that Yolo had painted her house sky blue.

It’s the color you felt at home in, in my canvases, he said.

Yes, she said, enchanted.

Kate Awoke the Last Day

Kate awoke the last day of the retreat eager to go home. Packing her things, saying good-bye to the little hut that had been her nest, she remembered a dream of the night before. She had been visited by a very old woman famous for making things beautiful. She’d swept into Kate’s drab abode and, just by thinking it, transformed each room into a bouquet of flowers. They were still rooms, but when she touched them, the walls turned into flowers. Kate had walked through her now very spacious, long, flower-walled house, a house that breathed perfume and freshness, toward the beach where she could see the Old One walking. She was wearing something that she said was made of vinyl, and therefore she could not walk directly in the sunlight, and she and her respectful assistant turned more toward the shadows as Kate approached them begging the old woman to stay. Kate felt a longing for her continued presence that she knew was aroused in people wherever the old woman went.
Please stay,
she cried, but the old woman was already telling the assistant about the next job she had on her schedule, the next drab abode that awaited her magic visit. So that is old age! Kate thought, waking. The ability to visit what is ugly and to transform into beauty anything you touch.

In the boat she told the dream to Armando, who smiled at her.

I did not know you were concerned about old age, he said.

I didn’t know it either, said Kate. But I guess I was.

She reminds me of my grandmother, said Lalika.

Her shaved head was purple where it appeared beneath her white crocheted cap. Her eyes were serene and clear.

There was a closeness among them, Missy, Kate, Rick, Lalika, Hugh, Armando, and Cosmi, that felt very ancient and very sweet. They were all considerably slimmer too.

For a long time the boat hummed along, skirting the jungle, and only after many hours did the inhabitants of villages begin to appear. Small clear-cut farms with a couple of scrawny mules and a dozen or so chickens or perhaps a goat. Thatched huts slightly larger than the ones they had left. It was like entering another world. Everything, after the opulence of the forest, seemed battered and sickly. The people, the women especially, looked shockingly oppressed, dejected, and malnourished as they dragged themselves about their hard-packed yards, so recently the lush floor of the rapidly disappearing Amazon forest. It seemed to Kate that every young woman they saw, above the age of thirteen, was pregnant. Near one of these farms the boat stopped for a woman dressed in clean but frayed and tattered clothes. They made room for her in the boat, but for the rest of the trip, two and a half hours or so, she kept herself away from them. It was as if she feared they would think her unfit to share the boat with them.

When they arrived safely at the outpost where a car awaited them Kate was relieved. Because they were hungry they stopped to eat at a restaurant that served rice and beans and fish, but no vegetables.

The farmer in her awoke. Surely people could grow some kind of greens here, she said to Armando. In all this heat and humidity. She was thinking especially of collards and kale, which did so well in the semitropical climate of the American South. And tomatoes, beans, and squash!

He shrugged, gratefully took his plate, and ate hungrily, as they all did, savoring their first nonretreat meal. There were small pebbles in the beans that almost cost Kate a tooth, but she carefully ate around them.

At the airport they exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses and hugged and kissed one another good-bye. This is the way people live now, thought Kate. If you’re lucky you get to spend intense weeks or months with people with whom you exchange the most intimate and vital information; then, you take off again, you are gone. She wondered if they would ever see one another again. She hoped so, but did not expect it to happen.

Yolo Woke

Yolo woke in Alma’s house thinking of Alma’s health. She must weigh two hundred pounds, at least, he thought. And her smoking and drinking is nonstop. He did not see how he could say this to her, however. He remembered her fierce temper. She’d probably kick him out before he had a chance to pack.

As he was thinking this, she stuck her head in the doorway.

Want coffee? she asked.

Did he want coffee? He sure did.

No, thank you, he said.

At breakfast he asked for hot water, into which he squeezed a lemon.

That looks healthy, she said. For breakfast she was having hash-brown potatoes, rice, sausage, ham, eggs, toast and jam, and a big cup of Folgers with whipped cream.

You were gone almost all night, she said, offering her best James Dean squint through cigarette smoke that briefly obliterated her face. What was Aunty Pearlua up to?

Yolo laughed. She’s something, he said. Is Pearlua her real name? he asked.

I doubt it, said Alma, waiting.

The surprise guest was none other than your namesake, he said, taking a slice of mango from a platter Alma ignored. Many Hawaiians disliked mangoes, he’d been told. They’d eaten too many as children, when times were tight.

Alma took a forkful of eggs and sausage. You mean you were not the surprise guest?

Everybody was a surprise, really, he said.

I didn’t even know my namesake was still alive, she said.

Very much so, said Yolo.

What’s she doing with herself?

What was she doing with herself the last time you checked in? he asked.

Some kind of diet thing, I think, said Alma, taking a bite of butter-slathered toast.

Did you know Aunty Pearlua and Aunty Alma are related? asked Yolo.

Everybody around here is related, said Alma. That’s what it means to be on islands thousands of miles from anybody else.

So Yolo began to tell her about his evening.

One of these days I hope you meet Kate, he began. The experience I had last night is the only kind she’s interested in. I never dreamed it could happen to me.

Alma raised an eyebrow while lighting a cigarette.

Being with the people of the world in a certain way, he elaborated, noting her look. A way that erases all boundaries and bullshit.

He told her how Jerry had invited him, because he’d sat beside the body of her son Marshall on the beach.

Well, said Alma, he didn’t invite me. There was bitterness in the smoke she blew across the table at him.

Yolo shrugged. We were all men, he said, until Aunty Alma came.

Aunty Pearlua and them would be highly insulted by that remark, said Alma.

Oops, said Yolo. You know what I mean.

Yes, I do know, said Alma, inhaling and slowly letting it out. She brought the yoni.

Exactly, said Yolo, laughing.

They had sat in the circle talking for hours, as the moon rose higher in the sky. During breaks some of them dashed across the highway and jumped in the ocean for a swim in the moonlight.

Aunty Pearlua was of the opinion that it was time for men to take another hard-to-keep vow in favor of children. She thought they should resign from participation in any addiction whatsoever, even from drinking coffee and black tea. She thought the example for the youth had to be clean, as she put it, and extreme. No drugs, no alcohol, no “recreational” sex, no caffeine, and no tobacco. She asked the men in the gathering to make this vow.

It shocked them, Yolo could see from the look on their faces. It was a look that said: Oh-oh, it has finally come to this. It wasn’t a look that doubted the wisdom of what Aunty Pearlua was saying.

I don’t think that can be done, said the blond man from Australia who had confessed an addiction to coffee. He looked stricken.

Behind every man’s place in the circle were his “things.” Car keys, wallet, package of “smokes,” and an unfinished bottle of beer.

How can we do this? was the question that arose for everyone and led quickly to a depression of spirits.

But Aunty Pearlua was serene. She waved her fan around the circle.

Do you think it’s been easy for Mahus to conduct their lives as women, all this time? she asked. Don’t you think from time to time we’ve wanted to cut off our hair and let our toenails grow long? She laughed. Ah, anyone can be a man, that is the problem. It takes much more to be a woman. But we have managed it. And why? Because we could see the plan men were laying out for woman and her children, a plan that enslaved and humiliated them before eradicating the divine in them entirely. Well, we Mahus were not going to have it. And you men today, seeing the plan laid out for our children, must say within your hearts:
We are not going to have it.

It is an odd protest, someone ventured.

It is not a protest, said Aunty Pearlua. It is a strategy. A strategy for survival.

I’ve smoked since I was this high, someone else said.

Beer is my water, said another.

Our bodies are all we have, said Aunty Pearlua. Over our bodies we can have some control. We can make of our bodies exactly what it is our young people need to see. Health and well-being.
Freedom.

Yolo cleared his throat.

Real men can’t stop drinking, he said, sarcastically, under his breath.

Jerry looked at him sorrowfully. On this island that’s pretty close to the truth, bradda, he said. We can’t stop smoking or fucking around or beating our wives and kids either.

Marshall’s brother, who everyone called Poi, was weeping; the sadness of his younger brother’s death had hung over him all evening.

Finally he said: It’s a good dream, Aunty, but it’s too late. The shit comes into the islands by the boatload. Every fucking day. We can’t stop that by not smoking.

And how do the cigarettes get here? asked Aunty Pearlua coolly. You know how, they get here by that same drug-dealing boat.

Yolo was not the only one who had not expected this turn of events. There was a new energy in the circle, the energy of “if only.” If only we had thought to try this, oh, maybe a century or two ago; if only we’d known about addiction when we were planting sugarcane and poisoning the weeds around it with arsenic before sending snow-white sugar out to enslave the world. If only Lili’uokalani had made her people promise to eat poi and taro leaves forever and not get hooked on white bread and processed cheese. If only the buck didn’t stop here.

Our diet is a disgrace, said Aunty Pearlua. She snorted. Now, I admit I’m big, like a lot of these other big Hawaiians you see around here, but there’s no reason for me to be this big. Except all the junk that now goes into this body. She made a face. All the white bread and mayonnaise. The beer. The smoke. All the pig and pasta salad.

That’s our culture, though, someone said, respectfully.

No, it isn’t, said Aunty Pearlua. Health is our culture; anything that interferes with it is our bondage. She grunted, and scratched her chin where the stubble was beginning to itch. I have Native American friends who are trying to talk their people off of fry bread, she said. It’s killing them. All that worthless “enriched” white flour and grease. But they say, Oh, no, if you take away fry bread Indians don’t have no culture. Such trash, she finished, and adjusted her lei.

It was at that point that an elderly woman with long silver hair and walking with a cane was seen entering the yard.

Aunty Pearlua got up from the circle to meet her. The two of them embraced, the elderly woman placed a lei made of green leaves around Aunty Pearlua’s neck, and Aunty Pearlua kissed her on both cheeks. They returned to the circle hand in hand. Though everyone else sat on the ground, a chair was brought for Aunty Alma.

She’s real old, huh? asked Alma. My namesake?

Old and gorgeous, said Yolo, who had immediately wanted to paint her. She was small, plump, and brown, with large dark eyes. Her silver hair was thick and full and the breeze from the ocean lifted it gently as it blew. Her skin was very good, very youthful, and there was a radiance about her that captivated everyone. She was dressed in a long green dress that made her seem part of the ocean that had walked up on the shore. Her hair seemed part of the moon.

Between us, she said to the circle, my sister Aunty Pearlua and I have kept something real about our culture alive. She has taught generations of Hawaiian women the true hula, the dance of the traditions and of the soul; and I have worked to teach cleanliness of the earth temple, the human body.

Everybody is surprised that an old lady like me loves John Lennon’s music, but I do. And one song in particular I like: “Cleanup Time.” Because that’s what time it is now, not only for us on these few islands but all over the world. In Africa, in Europe, in China. In Australia. In Indonesia. In Atearoa and Fiji and Tahiti too. And in America,
whew!
She made a face. We will have no future eating the slops the masters have brought, and furthermore clinging to them for dear life.

It is all about food, as I see it, she added. The food we eat, how good it is for us. And how efficiently we cleanse ourselves of it when it no longer is good for us.

Some of us are holding on to bad food we ate
years ago,
she said,
and the bad feelings that went with eating it,
I might add, without any idea that this is the easiest slippery slope to an early grave. Children, she said, seriously, looking into each of their faces,
we must learn to let go.

It was so unexpected, this visit, this subject, that the circle was stunned.

Food? Constipation?

Suddenly Aunty Alma giggled. I see I have surprised you, she said. I like surprises, she said, impishly, don’t you?

They didn’t know you were coming, said Aunty Pearlua. They thought we’d be a circle of men.

Aunty Alma raised her eyebrow. Aunty Pearlua laughed.