Chapter 7
Zoe told Consuela that she hadn’t seen a raven for days, till one divebombed her Chevy window. It yielded upward on a note of grace, then out of sight. I thought of Lucy, said Zoe. She was sure this was an omen, an apprehension of flight, a reminder that the biggest turn in the journey begins with a peculiar disturbance of vision.
Everything that has made sense in the past will leave you till your soul is squeezed dry, says the medicine woman in Zoe’s mirror. Zoe talks to herself during the insomnia of 3 a.m. She forgets her dignity, head in the refrigerator, looking for something to fill the space. She keeps trying to remind me of her existence, says Zoe. I keep trying to forget. Search cabinets for almonds, black tea, odd foreign cookies leftover from Christmas, brie and stale bread, good chocolate.
I’m supposed to be a medicine woman in this lifetime but I’ve forgotten the ritual. A mesquite branch will not shift to a snake . I cannot read the face of the full moon in February. A piece of toast on a sleepless night retains its own power, but is not the ceremony I really seek, is not the chocolate of knowledge, rich in its center with something so sweet I take my time to taste.
A fortune teller in Los Angeles told Zoe, Be careful when you cause the clouds to turn dark and move. Be aware of the force of lightning in your thoughts. This made her remember that tornado in Tula many West Texas years ago. Thinking she had a hand in it somehow, she stood watching the swirling wind full of leaves, feathers and dirt. Stood with her hand shading her eyes till the grandmother yanked her down the storm cellar and they sat in the stale darkness like two seeds till the wild wind crossed over. Lifetimes passed above them, full of familiar spirits. When they spoke, the kerosene lamp flickered with their dry whispers.
Only when the rushing voice stopped–far past the yawning silence in the eye of the storm–only then did we push the heavy aluminum roof up off the funeral swell of earth and emerge. We looked at the house, looked again for anything dead on the ground. This was a new world we were born to, past rapture, past anything we knew. With dread and hope we pushed that roof up and stepped into the weak sunlight.
Then the grandmother pointed to the ravens and said, There they are.
Lucy was the one had a handle on this kind of thing, though a girl could go crazy with this kind of information. Coming all at once, it dazzles the soul.
I remember that first time, when I was still Lucy, Zoe told Consuela, out to check oil wells with the grandfather at 5 a.m. Stunned as a rabbit by headlights with what was coming down from the stars, I froze–face up to the sky, feet flat to the hard brown field. Papaw, a rouster, said, “Girl, didn’t you hear me?” But I was listening to something else. Cause the wind was always talking to me, whining in through cracks in the aluminum storm windows, rustling through the leaves .
That day they got up before dawn cracked. The grandmother made breakfast while the dog Peanuts growled low in his throat for some bacon. A pound of it sizzled in the cast iron skillet. They ate hot oatmeal iced with sugar, and burnt toast, black coffee.
Somewhere my soul, on loan as it is, floated into this paradise of sweet and salt and hot on the tongue. Eight-year-old girl drinking black coffee on a cold ass West Texas day. This was part of the ritual, before getting out on the field, to wander face up at the nothing gray sky. To wait for grace. To be there in the still time before light, the time prophets must have been awake, sensing the wonder that we continue to evolve from darkness.
In the hard brown field she stood on a body of black water slicked with oil, oil tight in the hard rock underneath. I put my left spirit arm over my right body arm and prayed till I passed out of that flat place, till I passed out in memory of Milky Way, stardust forever, raven wing darkness, so soft. I hear Papaw calling. He calls from the other side. His face is a blur under a red gimme cap, his voice is the wind. I know from this moment I will hear another voice I was not born into, that roots made in this lifetime would not be enough. Seven solar systems revolve in my blood. The knowledge lifts in my dreams and blinds me with its wings.
The message is to keep rising, outward into a spiral of light. The message is in medicine words, a language which contains all words, to which all other languages fit into like a perfect cosmic puzzle. A Mayan prophet says, “Ge is egg is gene.” There is no way out of here but a word can save us. A dark man whispers in Spanish, Relampago! Lightning strikes, and there is this urge to fly.
