Possessing the Secret of Joy Part 6

EVELYN.

I FELT NO COMPUNCTION about opening letters that came from Lisette to Adam, letters which sometimes contained copies of letters she'd received from her uncle Mzee touching on my case; or even, sometimes, copies of letters from Adam himself; she seemed often to need to jog his memory about something or other. There was an occasional copied page of her diary in which she appeared contented, and self-possessed: autonomous in a way I could not imagine for myself. She also had the nerve occasionally to address a letter to me. These always sounded as if she were feeling her way through fog. I trampled them. I routinely, and leisurely, read those from her which Adam left lying open at the back of his bottom desk drawer, the key to which I had long since duplicated. It was from one of her letters that I learned their son, Pierre, was coming to America.

Informing me he was going to a gathering of progressive religieux, Adam flew to Boston to meet him and was gone a week, helping Pierre settle into the life of Cambridge and Harvard. The boy was still far away, the breadth of the continent, so I did not worry. He remained in Cambridge for three years.

It was from her letters that I learned of Lisette's illness. Diagnosed first as stress brought on by her political activity: she was active in the movement against French nuclear power plants, which, she wrote, dotted like dangerous pustules the once pristine countryside; later diagnosed as an ulcer. Then as a hernia. Then, finally, as stomach cancer. She pet.i.tioned Adam to permit Pierre to live with him and to attend Berkeley after her death. This Adam apparently agreed to do; I refused to let him bring up the subject with me.

It was during a period when I could not eat and was emaciated as a scarecrow; my clothes hung on me, and I wore nothing that wasn't black. The week before, someone introduced to me by Adam said, with a sn.i.g.g.e.r: "Ah, Adam and Evelyn. How cute!" And I slapped him.

I felt the violence rising in me with every encounter with the world outside my home. Even inside it I frequently and with little cause, no cause, boxed Benny's ears. If I made him squeal and cringe and look at me with eyes gone grave with love and incomprehension, I fancied I felt relief.

I was watching the street when the taxi came. A boxy, bright yellow, child's cartoon of a taxi. The kind of taxi the world expects all American taxis to be. I glimpsed Pierre's curly head before he got out, as he leaned forward to pay the driver. He was skinny and short, as if still a child. I watched the two of them, chatting like old friends, go around to the boot to take out his bags.

Still chatting, they did not notice the dark spectre floating near them: first to the door, then to the porch, then to the steps, alighting to stoop beside a large pile of stones I had begun to collect the very day I learned of Pierre's birth. Large oblong stones from the roadside; heavy flat stones from the riverbank; sharp jagged shale stones from the fields.

As Pierre thanked the driver and turned toward the house, he saw me, and smiled. A large jagged stone, gray as grief, struck him just above the teeth. Blood spurted from his nose. I began to throw the stones as if, like Kali, I had a dozen arms, or as if my arms were a multiple catapult or a windmill. Stones rained upon him and upon the cab, which had started to pull off but screeched to a stop as the driver realized Pierre was under attack and sinking to one knee. I did not let up, but floated nearer, cradling an armful of stones. Pierre began to speak in a gibberish of French, which infuriated me. I dropped the stones in order to close my ears with the palms of my hands. During this interlude, the cabbie ran up to Pierre, grabbed him under the arms and dragged him out of sight.

I began to laugh, as the taxi disappeared down the street. In their cowardly haste they'd forgotten Pierre's luggage. The brown suitcases sat, importunate and irrevocable, where he'd dropped them; more heavy baggage for me to lift and somehow carry. I would not. I dove forward, flapping my arms and shrieking hoa.r.s.ely like a crow, to kick them into the street.

PART TEN.

EVELYN.

THE BUS RIDE from Ombere station was long. The roads b.u.mpy. The dust everywhere. Each twenty-five kilometers or so we stopped to use roadside facilities. These were not at all like those in America but were entirely makeshift. Smelly holes in the earth on either side of which some forward-thinking person had nailed a board. On these boards, inevitably splashed with urine, one placed one's feet.

A week ago I would not have expected M'Lissa to still be alive. But yes, according to a year-old Newsweek I perused in the waiting room of the Waverly, she was not only alive but a national monument. She had been honored by the Olinka government for her role during the wars of liberation, when she'd acted as a nurse as devoted to her charges as Florence Nightingale, and for her unfailing adherence to the ancient customs and traditions of the Olinka state. No mention was made of how she fulfilled this obligation. She had been decorated, "knighted," the magazine said; swooped up from her obscure hut, where she lay dying on a filthy straw mat, and brought to a s.p.a.cious cottage on the outskirts of a nearby town, where she would be within easy commute to a hospital, should the need arise.

After being brought out of her dark hut and into the sunlight of her new home-with running water and an indoor toilet, both miracles to the lucky M'Lissa-a remarkable change had occurred. M'Lissa had stopped showing any signs of death, stopped aging, and had begun to actually blossom. "Youthen," as the article said. A local nurse, a geriatrics specialist, ministered to her; a cook and a gardener rounded out her staff. M'Lissa, who had not walked in over a year, began again to walk, leaning on a cane the president himself had given her, and enjoyed tottering about in her garden. She loved to eat, and kept her cook on his toes preparing the special dishes of lamb curry, raisin rice and chocolate mousse she particularly liked. She had a mango tree; indeed, the photograph showed her sitting beneath it; she sat there happily, day after day, when the crop came on, stuffing herself.

In the photograph M'Lissa smiled broadly, new teeth glistening; even her hair had grown back and was a white halo around her deep brown head.

There was something sinister, though, about her aspect; but perhaps I was the only one likely to see it. Though her mouth was smiling, as were her sunken cheeks and her long nose, her wrinkled forehead and her scrawny neck, her beady eyes were not. Looking into them, suddenly chilled, I realized they never had.

How had I entrusted my body to this madwoman?

TASHI-EVELYN.

A FLAG FLEW above her house, the red, yellow and blue vivid against the pale noonday periwinkle sky. I was not her only visitor; there were cars parked in the postage-stamp parking lot, neatly screened from the house by a rose-colored bougainvillea, and a tour bus was halted by the road. The pa.s.sengers were not permitted to disembark, but were busy taking photographs of the cottage from the windows of the bus. I left my rental car out of view of the house, and when I walked up the red steps to the porch and looked back, I felt surprise that it had disappeared. Not seeing the vehicle of my arrival seemed right, however, after a moment's reflection, for I experienced all the more a feeling I'd begun to have in the openness of the countryside: that I had flown direct, as if I were a bird, from my house to hers, and that this had been accomplished with the directness of thought: a magical journey.

I was met on the porch by a young woman who had not been mentioned in the Newsweek article: slender, with smooth dark skin and shining eyes, as lovely as a freshly cut flower. I explained I'd known M'Lissa all my life; that she had in fact delivered me into the world, having been a great friend of my mother and in fact mother of the entire village. I explained I had come from America, where I now lived, even though Olinka by birth, and that I hoped to spend time with M'Lissa, perhaps after her other guests had gone.

What is your name? she asked softly.

Tell her it is Tashi, Catherine's, no, Nafa's daughter, who went to America with the son of the missionary.

She turned. Out of habit I glanced down at her feet. As she moved away, I saw she had the sliding gait of the "proper" Olinka maiden.

Within minutes all of M'Lissa's guests poured out of the house, as if scattered by her cane. They scrutinized me as they pa.s.sed. Perhaps they thought me an important dignitary. As their car motors were turning over, shattering the quiet, the young woman returned.

You may go in, she said, with a smile.

What is your name? I asked her.

Martha, she replied.

And your other name?

Mbati, she said, her eyes twinkling.

Mbati, I said, why do the people come here?

The question surprised her. Mother Lissa is a national monument, she said. Recognized as a heroine by every faction of the government, including the National Liberation Front. She's famous, she said, shrugging her shoulders and looking at me as if puzzled I didn't know.

I do know that, I said. I read Newsweek.

Ah, Newsweek, she said.

But what do they talk about with her?

About their daughters. About the old ways. About tradition. She paused. It is mostly women who come. You may have noticed this by the people who just left. Women of a certain age. Women with daughters. Frightened women, often. She rea.s.sures them.

Oh? I said.

Yes. She knows so much and says such bizarre things. Why, do you know, Mama Lissa claims there was a time when women did not have periods! Oh, she says, there may have been a single drop of blood, but only one! She says this was before woman's capture.

I couldn't help laughing, as Mbati was doing.

She just sits and talks; holds court. It hardly matters what she says. She is probably a hundred; everyone wants to have been in her presence before she dies. So much, as you know, has fallen apart here: independence is killing us as surely as colonialism did. But then, she added, sighing, that is because it isn't really independence.

Mbati takes my hand and pulls me slowly forward, still speaking quietly. She is a link with the past for us; especially for us women, she says. She is the only woman honored in this way by the government; she is an ikon.

How is it possible, I think, as Mbati leads me into M'Lissa's sparkling hallway and pushes me into M'Lissa's room and toward a snow white bed, that my mother has lived and died; Mzee has lived and died; the Frenchwoman Lisette has lived and died; I myself have lived and died-in and out of the Waverly, in and out of my mind-many times. World wars have been fought and lost; for every war is against the world and every war against the world is lost. But look, here lies M'Lissa, propped up like a queen in her snowy bed, the open window beside it looking out into a fragrant garden, and in the distance, above the garden, there is a blue mountain. She is radiant, and her forehead, nose, lips, teeth, cheeks smile at me. I bend to kiss the top of her head, her white hair a resistant brush against my lips. I take her hand, which has the feel of feathers, and stand a moment looking down at her. Her whole body is smiling her welcome; except for her eyes. They are wary and alert. I had thought when people aged, their eyes went bad. But no, she sees me clearly. Hers is an x-ray gaze. But then, so is mine, now. What is that shadow, there in the depths? Is it apprehension? Is it fear?

PART ELEVEN.

EVELYN.

MBATI IS TAKING THE STAND. She wears no makeup or jewelry and her hair is short and natural. There is a simplicity about her that dignifies the whole room. When she speaks the warm quietness of her personality soothes the court, even if the hoa.r.s.e cry of the ceiling fans becomes more grating than ever. She is the daughter I should have had. Perhaps could have had, had I not aborted her out of fear.

I float up to the stand and hover, a large dragonfly, in front of her. Reaching out, I take her smooth hand in mine. Her eyes widen: with wonder; with delight. Come, I say to her, smiling, I am your mother. If you take my hand before all of these people, all of these judges, all of these policemen and warders and rubbernecks in the audience, you will discover that the two of us can fly. Really? she asks, placing her other hand also in mine. I tug gently and she leaves her seat and floats beside me over the railing of the witness stand, over the attorneys' tables, over the heads of the packed courtroom... out the door and into the sky. We are lighter than air, lighter than thistle. Mother and daughter heading for the sun.

No, I suspected nothing, she is saying, when I float back into myself, sitting on the hard chair next to my attorney.

They were old friends. Mother Lissa knew her. She was happy to see her. In fact, I'd never seen her so excited. They needed to talk. Time alone. Mother Lissa insisted.

And so you left your post. Left Mother Lissa's bedside. Even left the house, the attorney says accusingly.

My daughter drops her head. But quickly looks up again. There is that healthy, impish twinkle in her eyes she sometimes gets.

She turns her face to the judges. Your Honors, she says, firmly, I left the vicinity.

They all ignore this spark of life. This simple authenticity. This beauty.

Objection, says the other attorney. (I can no longer really tell them apart; the only way I recognize which attorney is mine is by noticing which of them sits next to me, and by the way he smells: his cologne is a scent popular in America.) The defendant's fiendish behavior is not something which, in advance, the witness could have known.

Did you suspect anything? prods the attorney.

The child looks pained. I feel sorry for her. How could they imagine any of this is her fault? It was I who shooed Mbati from her post; I who told M'Lissa: Mama Lissa, give the girl a break. Your other daughter has come from America just to look after you! Since this coming back to care for the elderly was such a strong characteristic of the ancient traditions, how could she refuse?

Oh, M'Lissa had said, it is too much happiness. Too much! To see the daughter of Nafa, here, right beside my bed. Oh, surely I shall die of it!

I thought it an odd thing to say.

How did the defendant appear to you? the prosecuting attorney asks.

There is a long pause. Motherly, Mbati replies.

The young man is surprised. What, his look implies, this demon, motherly!

Yes, Mbati continues in a definite voice. I lost my own mother when I was an infant, and yet never believed she died. When Mrs. Johnson showed up at the door- Childhood memories are quite irrelevant to this court, says the attorney, cutting her off. Though surely the humane response would have been to let her finish; even if one felt quite unable to ask the question: How did your mother die? It is a taboo question, in Olinka. One never asked for fear of the answer.

Mbati subsides into silence, but looks me in the face and holds my gaze. I see she has not condemned me.

EVELYN.

MY HEART GOES OUT to Adam, physically stout, emotionally frail; perspiration beading on his upper lip. It is hard to believe this grayhaired and graybearded old man is my husband, and has been my dearest friend for over fifty years. And was my lover.

He looks condemned, simply to be present in the jammed court. He stares up disconsolately at the recently oiled, slowly whirring ceiling fans, or out the open windows, awaiting the thrust and parry of the attorneys' questions.

I remember when his body was slender and firm, and how I used to kiss from nipple to nipple across the smooth expanse of his beautiful chest.

He is saying I am a tortured woman. Someone whose whole life was destroyed by the enactment of a ritual upon my body which I had not been equipped to understand.

As soon as he utters the word "ritual" there is a furor in the court. Male voices, and female voices, calling for Adam's silence. Shut up, shut up, you disgraceful American! the voices cry. This is our business you would put into the streets! We cannot publicly discuss this taboo.

Adam looks weary. About to weep.

Mother Lissa was a monument! the voices hiss. Your wife has murdered a monument. The Grandmother of the race!

I feel the furies, the shrieking voices, wrap their coils around my neck. But rather than allowing myself to choke, I become a part of the shrieking and rise from around my own neck exactly as if I were wind. I blow and blow about the court, building toward explosion.

The judges call for order, over and over. The other furies and I subside. At last order is restored.

I am thinking of how I never met Lisette. How she tried to know me. Tried to visit me. Wrote me letters. Tried to interest me in French cooking-sent me cookbooks and recipes. Sent me clippings about wild mushrooms and where to look for them. (None of this is helpful, I used to mutter to myself, gazing into the mirror and sticking out my tongue.) Sent me her son. And how I refused her. How I thought she knew me too well.

And then suddenly, after a long, painful struggle, she died. Leaving Pierre her eyes-for his eyes are not Adam's-and it was those knowing eyes, with their appraising look, that, from as far away as an undergraduate dormitory at Harvard, saw into me. Even into my dreams.

Chere Madame Johnson, he wrote. I hope you will not tear up this letter before you read it. (At that point I of course tore it in half, then held the pieces together to continue reading.) All my life I have heard about the tower that frightens you in your dreams. This tower question obsessed my mother since the day she heard of it, and she read many books trying to figure out what it could mean. It was an effort I shared, from the time I was a small boy. Always in the back of my mind has hovered this compelling nightmare of yours, told only once to my mother by my father, but told so vividly our house was never quite free of it.

For as we both understood it, this nightmare, this cauchemar of yours, of being held captive in a dark tower, was what kept my father away from me.

Madame, I now know what the tower is, though not, perhaps, what it means.

As you know, I am now in Berkeley, which is not so far, after all, from your house.

Will you not throw stones?

Shall we meet?

Pierre Johnson ADAM.

THEY DO NOT WANT to hear what their children suffer. They've made the telling of the suffering itself taboo. Like visible signs of menstruation. Signs of woman's mental power. Signs of the weakness and uncertainty of men. When they say the word "taboo" I try to catch their eye. Are they saying something is "sacred" and therefore not to be publicly examined for fear of disturbing the mystery; or are they saying it is so profane it must not be exposed, for fear of corrupting the young? Or are they saying simply that they can not and will not be bothered to listen to what is said about an accepted tradition of which they are a part, that has gone on, as far as they know, forever?

These are the kinds of questions my father taught me to ask, alas. Adam, he would say, What is the fundamental question one must ask of the world? I would think of and posit many things, but the answer was always the same: Why is the child crying? There had been a crying child even in Old Torabe, whose filth and age and illness so disgusted me. Before he died, I saw it. He had not loved the majority of his wives; in fact, he didn't even hate them; he thought of them as servants in the most disposable sense. He barely remembered their names. But the young woman who ran away, the wife who drowned herself, he had at least thought he loved. Unfortunately for him "love" and frequent, forceful s.e.x were one. And so he lay, finally, wounded and wet with his own tears, lamenting his life but knowing no other. Women are indestructible down there, you know, he'd said to me, lewdly, more than once, his eyes alight with remembered lechery and violence. They are like leather: the more you chew it, the softer it gets.

If every man in this courtroom had had his p.e.n.i.s removed, what then? Would they understand better that that condition is similar to that of all the women in this room? That, even as we sit here, the women are suffering from the unnatural constrictions of flesh their bodies have been whittled and refashioned into? Not just Evelyn. But also the young woman from the paper shop; the old woman who sells oranges. The bourgeois women in their elegant robes, fanning themselves and powdering their noses against the humidity. The poor women packed tight against the back doors. The beautiful, daughterly woman, Mbati.

How wearying to think n.o.body in this courtroom has ever listened to them. I see each one of them as the little child my father was always so concerned about, screaming her terror eternally into her own ear.

We are aware, says the prosecutor, that Mrs. Johnson, though Olinkan, has lived in America for many, many years, and that American life is, for the black person, itself a torture.

I stare at him blankly.

Is it not true, Mr. Johnson, that in the United States, with its stressful whites, your wife is often committed to an insane asylum?

My wife is hurt, I say. Wounded. Broken. Not mad.

Evelyn laughs. Flinging her head back in deliberate challenge. The laugh is short. Sharp. The bark of a dog. Beyond hurt. Unquestionably mad. Oddly free.

EVELYN-TASHI.

THEY WOULD ALL TAKE America away from me if they could. But I won't let them. If I have to, I'll stop them in their tracks. Just as I stopped Amy. How do you stop someone in their tracks? By not believing them.