Queen of Dreams (17 page)

“She wouldn’t want you to be this way,” he says.

What the fuck do you know about what she’d want? What the fuck does either of us know?

“You probably wish I had died instead of your mother,” he says. “I do, too.”

She’s shocked into looking at him. She hadn’t thought he’d know. Wily old jackal. Or maybe it’s just her, being naïve, like Sonny had said when she’d tried to speak to him about what happened to her at the party.

Her father smiles, if you can call something that sad a smile. “But I didn’t die, and we both have to accept that—and deal with it.” He takes another step toward her. She can feel the uncertain heaviness of his tread. A board creaks.

“You found her journals,” he says.

She was back inside the house of smoke and music. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed. The night was a blur, filled with things she didn’t remember, or had forced herself to forget. Her lips felt swollen, as though someone had kissed them roughly. Her throat burned. She was in a narrow passageway. She had found her purse. It seemed very heavy, dangling from the crook of her elbow. Had someone put something in it? It was too dim in the passageway to see.

The music had changed. African drums, and a woman keening in Irish. It was interesting, but it wasn’t Sonny’s.

Now she was in a long, narrow room filled with silk cushions. People were sitting around a low, lacquered table. There was a mirror, lines of white dust. She knew what that meant. Sonny looked up at her. His eyes were red, like a night animal’s. But how would she have known that, in this room lit only by candles? Hi sweetheart come on in.

She isn’t sure which of the following actually happened, and in which order: She rushed at him, shouting. Hands pulled her down before she got far. Whoa sweetheart, here’s something to calm you down. She hit him, sending the white dust flying. Arms wouldn’t let her go. There were lips. Fingers on the buttons of her dress. She could feel each silk thread separately on her skin before it slid off. Later she would find a long scratch along the underside of her arm, crusted with dried blood. He offered her the mirror. She took it and lowered her face to it, because what else was there to do. Someone pulled her down on a cushion. There were hands everywhere. She cried out, Sonny, Sonny, help me, but he was busy smiling at someone else. Someone led her out of the room. Someone called a taxi. She was laughing. She was crying. She was very, very thirsty. She drank what someone put into her hand. She put her hand into Sonny’s pants pocket and found the car keys. She drove home, careful not to speed, flexing her legs to keep them from cramping. She didn’t throw up until she was parked in the driveway. She remembered to be thankful that Jona was staying with her mother. The only fact she’s sure of is this: at some point that night, she looked up at the sky. It was empty, the moon had been eaten up. She knew then that she had to leave him.

Her father bends, strokes the cover of a notebook as though it were a face. “I can help you read them,” he says. The words hang in front of her, gossamer-winged as a fishing lure. “If you want.”

18

FROM THE
DREAM JOURNALS

LESSON 62: THE TALE OF
NEEHAR THE UNFORTUNATE (AN EXCERPT)

. . . and the elders saw that in Neehar the gift was strong, stronger than they had seen in their lifetime. Her body glowed with it, as if formed of phosphor, and there was distance in her eye, as though she were looking into the vastness of time. This made them afraid, for they knew the stories of other such gifted women, and what had become of them. They held a council and decided that they would share with Neehar the first nine levels of skill but keep from her the tenth and most powerful. It did no good. When Neehar dreamed, all secrets were laid open before her, even secrets that the elders themselves did not know. Thus Neehar grew stronger than the leaders of the council, but she was young and willful, and did not know how to use her power.

When the training of the novices was ended, the elders, in a last attempt to save Neehar, asked her to remain with them in the caves and become a teacher. They promised that with time she would be given the leadership of the council. But to Neehar a life among old women in the depths of a mountain’s fastness seemed small and suffocating. The power that burned in her was restless to be known. It called to her to taste of the world and all that lay in it. She left the caves, but unlike her sister novices she did not settle in a town, as was the custom, and tend to its inhabitants. Instead she traveled through the land, reading the dreams of all who asked her. Though she had been warned that dream tellers must be secret in the practice of their craft, she scorned such caution.

In full sight of the crowds that gathered wherever she went, she would place her hands on the temples of those that came to be helped, and tell them the meaning of their dreams. There was no dream so complex that she could not unravel it, no problem so deep that she did not have its solution. It is said that each day she saved a thousand lives and reputations, predicted victory and good fortune, gave hope to the despairing, and warned the luckless of disasters that lay in wait. But in the trance of seeing, with a care for nothing but the truth, she often spoke aloud of things that should have been whispered into the dreamers’ ears. Thus families were sundered, allies turned into enemies, and men and women in shame left their homes and were never seen again. In this way she angered many, though none dared to harm her, for it was believed that she had spirit protectors. People claimed to have seen a great gray wolf following her as she left one village at dusk for another, and some said that when she rested at midday, an eagle spread its wings above her head to shield her from the sun.

A year passed, or a decade. Neehar the Unfortunate told more dreams, and more, working day and night without pause, for the power that burned in her had taken control and was not willing to sheathe itself. She grew gaunt and hollow-cheeked, and her eyes, sunken in their pits, glowed like coals. She became known as Neehar the Ember-eyed, and men grew afraid to approach her. But this did not matter to Neehar. By now she could look at a person’s forehead and tell if he had a dream worth reading. If he did, she told it to him whether he wished it or not. News of her doings traveled to the caves, and the elders sent a message reprimanding her for flouting the laws of dream telling and ordering her to come back. But Neehar did not obey. Perhaps it was no longer in her power to return.

It was in this time that Neehar began to read the dreams of the dead. Perhaps she did so because she had read the dreams of all the living who resided east of the river Kaveri. (Strangely, she who had broken so many laws observed this one ordinance: that dream tellers should not cross water.) Or perhaps the dead, with their brains cooled and stiffening and their eyes sealed, presented a challenge she could not resist. She went from home to grieving home and kissed the newly dead on their foreheads, or sat with their heads in her lap, not caring if relatives protested against her coming. People who had the ability to see such things said that a current of white would leap from the forehead of the corpse to her forehead. After a time she would open her eyes with a sigh and say, “Ah, so it is.” But she never spoke of what she saw.

Only once, at the home of a mother grieving for her drowned baby, she touched the young woman on the cheek and said, “See, there is no need to weep.” The woman grew quiet and dried her tears, but later, when asked what she had seen, she could only remember a sweet scent, as of lotus flowers.

Then news came to Neehar that the great saint Vishnu-pada had announced that he was about to leave his mortal embodiment. She went to his ashram, where all his disciples were gathered, and asked the ascetic if she could touch him as he died. Vishnu-pada looked at her with compassion and said, “Child, the secret that you seek is not to be known this way. It is only by looking inward that you will find it.” But he gave her permission.

It is said that when Vishnu-pada died, Neehar sat at his head, her fingers touching his skull. And when his spirit left his body, it passed through Neehar and exited from her head in the form of a shaft of lightning. Neehar fell to the ground, and for three days she remained unconscious. When she came to, she no longer spoke, though she laughed or cried often. Some said that the shock of such a powerful spirit passing through her frame had driven her mad. But others claimed that the light in her eyes was one of serenity. Be that as it may, from that moment onward, Neehar the Unfortunate did not tell a single dream. She sat by the Kaveri for days without moving, staring at the water. If the villagers brought food, she ate sometimes, but often she left it untouched. It seemed that she no longer needed such sustenance. When she disappeared—some say it was a few weeks later, some say it was years . . .

Questions:

19

Rakhi

We’re crossing the San Rafael Bridge in Sonny’s silver BMW, Sonny, myself, Jona and my mother, heading toward the Marin Headlands. Sonny is driving. Jona sits in the back, looking out at the bay and humming, under her breath, that song again, those words I don’t understand. My mother is in the back seat, too, Jona’s arm looped around her burial urn. The urn is wrapped in a towel because Sonny says it is illegal to scatter ashes on state property. I am occupying, reluctantly, the front passenger seat, where Jona has insisted I sit. (“Only adults are allowed to be up there, Mom. It has an air bag,” she stated virtuously. But I suspect she has a more devious motive.)

When Sonny and I were still married, whenever we drove somewhere, Jona made us place her car seat so that she could see us both. From her vantage point in the back she would instruct us from time to time, a small, insistent Cupid.
Mom, hold Dad’s hand.
Dad, kiss Mom
. I wonder now if it was anxiety that drove her, if she sensed something that I didn’t know yet. Can children smell trouble the way animals do? An earthquake about to happen, tectonic plates getting ready to separate?
Mom, move closer and put
your head on Dad’s shoulder.
I feel the old words hanging between us like unfinished business, though they shouldn’t. Our business was finished long ago, and this isn’t even the same car. Sonny must have bought it recently. I wonder what happened to his Viper, about which we used to fight from time to time. (I felt that his refusal to trade it in for a “family car” was symbolic of his reluctance to be a family man.) Maybe he’s kept that, too, Sonny-the-chameleon, who can be anything he wants. But I’m not about to ask. He wants to waste his money, it’s none of my business.

According to Jona, my mother is not inside the urn but sitting on the back seat beside her. She adds that her grandmother has described to her exactly where she wants her ashes scattered. She trusts Jona to do it right, but she wants to come along for fun.

I wasn’t going to encourage Jona by commenting on any of this, but Sonny asks, “Can you see her?”

“I don’t need to,” Jona says with disdain. “I know what she looks like.”

The urn is surprisingly small, surprisingly heavy, made of a dark metal I don’t recognize. It clinks when we move it. Those are the teeth, Jona states. She speaks with a calmness that I find admirable and gruesome.

Jona cried for her grandmother continuously for the first few days after the accident, then stopped all of a sudden. She says my mother has told her not to waste energy on such an unprofitable activity. I refuse to believe her, though it sounds like the kind of thing my mother would say. Am I jealous that my mother would choose to appear to my daughter and not to me? Jona says that her grandmother is going to stay near her for seventy-seven days; then she has to go. She says each day her grandmother teaches her one wise thing.

My father is not with us. I’d been sure he’d want to come. I’d dreaded the thought of having to drive him from Fremont to Sonny’s house. In a car, there’s no place you can escape to. In a few minutes, you could be suffocated by conversation.

I’ve resumed speaking to my father because he’s translating the journals. A payment of sorts. But our talks are painful, stuttery, like learning to walk after your bones have been broken. The journal he’s started on—we think it’s the earliest one, because the cover is worn, falling apart. But we have no way of knowing. The books are not dated, and the entries, he tells me, meander from subject to subject. The one piece he’s translated so far, a list of meanings for things you might dream of, made little sense to me. I was disappointed there wasn’t anything personal about my mother in it. My disappointment made me suspicious. I wondered if my father was leaving out things he didn’t want me to know.

When I asked my father if he wanted to accompany us, he said he’d rather not. I should have been relieved; instead, I was angry. Why not? I asked. He said scattering ashes was too final; he wasn’t ready for it. I walked out of the room in the middle of his sentence. I wanted to slam the door but I didn’t because I needed him—and hated the fact that I did.

We drive through the Marin Headlands. The late afternoon is beautiful in that foggy, Northern California way, budded poppies appearing suddenly through mist like orange periods. We pull into a couple of empty parking areas close to the cliff edge, but each time Jona shakes her head. I’m about to make a sharp, motherlike remark when she yells excitedly at us to stop. Sonny parks the car illegally on a narrow embankment and we scramble up the scrubby hillside, heads lowered against a strong wind that has started up. At the cliff edge, the ground falls away dizzyingly. Below, the Pacific hurls itself against black, gleaming rocks. My eyes are drawn to the sloping red cables of the Golden Gate Bridge, and beyond it, to the silver city, glowing against the day’s late grayness. If I’d died, I, too, would want my remains to become part of this land, this water, because there’s a way in which the geography of one’s childhood makes its way into one’s bones.