Ancient, Ancient

WaLiLa learns that she is on an island in the Caribbean sea. Spanish is spoken here, and Africa is remembered. There has been bondage and savage killing. Twice determined youth revolted, causing citizens to drink optimism and communism like wine. After celebrated freedom, hardship rooted itself in the island soil. Today despair is as common as clouds. The local diet is resilience. The simple pleasures of work and food float beyond the reach of the common folk. The people have been losing family members with the passing of the years. Cousins, parents, and lovers try to escape by walking into the sea, as their tar-toned ancestors had done centuries past.

WaLiLa is so deep into the conversation she barely notices the new pitch the voices around her have engaged. A different tune is being expressed, and the woman’s motions change immediately. WaLiLa slows down her conversation. The woman opens her mouth, lets out a series of shrieks, and falls to the ground. The drumming lowers to a whisper. The chanting drops to a low rumble. Three people gather around the fallen woman. They clear the charged air around her with palm fronds. An old man stops singing long enough to bark some blessings over the woman’s body and shower her with rum sprayed from the fountain of his lips. The three lift her to her feet. Once on her feet, the woman opens her eyes. They shine like dark moons beneath the rim of her white head-wrap. When her eyes make direct contact with WaLiLa’s, the woman’s identity pops into WaLiLa’s vision center.

? Elisa Eguitez, 51, 5?4?, 201, Cuban ?

Then the woman’s eyes flutter closed. The dark moons are strong, decides WaLiLa. This woman will be my host.

2.

After the ceremony, Elisa walks directly to WaLiLa and asks her if she has a place to stay.

“You can stay with me, m’ija. What I’m offerin ain’t too special. I only have a small place, and I share it with my two sons, but…”

WaLiLa doesn’t question how Elisa knows she needs lodging. It has been some time since she last spoke this tongue and wants to observe more before she starts stretching sounds through her lips.

In silence, WaLiLa follows Elisa’s heavy, swaying flesh across a grassy field. Elisa stops at tree and leans over a rusty orange bicycle. She stuffs a bag full of mango and banana into a straw basket rigged to the front of the bike. Behind the seat, attached to the top of the back fender, is a plank of wood. Elisa motions for WaLiLa to sit. WaLiLa hikes up the cloth she had hastily wrapped around her body and sits. If Elisa notices WaLiLa’s shoeless feet, she says nothing. Nor does she comment on the flowers stuck to the soles of WaLiLa’s feet. With a grunt Elisa pushes the bike pedals into forward motion. After a couple of slow, strained pedal rotations, the bike takes flight. WaLiLa’s body jerks back. She spreads her arms and closes her eyes as the cool breeze rushes past her face.

During the bike ride, Elisa neither asks questions nor offers information. In the absence of chatter, a cotton-soft stillness envelops the bicycle. WaLiLa’s message-center is overcome with surprise. Serenity rarely visits in the presence of human beings. WaLiLa welcomes it as it reminds her of the deep peace of floating in a cocoon surrounded by the dark matter of space.

The quiet embrace of silence is abruptly broken when Elisa skids to a sudden stop. WaLiLa feels the imbalance instantly and slides to her feet. A thick crowd blocks the sidewalk and the street. Elisa pushes through the crowd with repeated permiso’s. WaLiLa follows. When they finally reach the front of the crowd, Elisa gasps. Her hands spread in shock; the bicycle tilts, then clatters to the ground.

“Chango!” Elisa whispers.

“What is?” asks WaLiLa as she feels her skin bend under sharp jabs of burning air. A ferocious being of concentrated heat leaps through the small courtyard in front of them. Its multiple fingers of light dance in the windows and on the roofs of the courtyard’s houses. The crowd is frozen in awe as fear spirals through the air.

“Chango!” Elisa yells a second time. The terror in her voice shoots over the crowd and bounces against eardrums that had been formed in her womb. Her children rest their buckets of water on the ground and turn to scan the crowd for their mother. When they see Elisa, they run across the courtyard, dodging neighbors, and grab a tight hold of her.

“I’m sorry, Mama, the fire cannot be stopped.”

So this is the great being’s full fury, WaLiLa thinks as she instinctively backs away from the fire. She fixes her vision on the houses again. She watches as the little structures weakly bow and yield before the fire’s will. I have seen tales of your destructive powers, she quickly motions to the fire before returning her focus to the humans next to her. As the boys speak to their mother in soothing tones, WaLiLa examines them.

? Modesto Alonzo, 24, 6?1?, 160, Cuban ?

? Pedro Alonzo, 38, 5?7?, 135, Cuban ?

As Pedro’s slight body fills WaLiLa’s vision-center, the Assignment signal blinks immediately. It is the elder, WaLiLa thinks, who must provide the nectar. She crosses her arms and studies his mannerisms as he attempts to quiet his mother’s mumbling. WaLiLa can’t discern if Elisa is mumbling curses or prayers. She looks back to the fiery courtyard, watching as the fire, perhaps bored with toying with human emotions, burns down to a simmer, then finally extinguishes itself.

3.

The day after the fire, Elisa, Modesto, Pedro, and WaLiLa stand in front of Elisa’s fire-buckled front door. A smoky scent hovers in the morning air. With worried fingers, WaLiLa twists the hem of the dress Elisa’s sister-in- law loaned her. Smoke is a bad omen.

Quietly, as if arming herself for battle, Elisa clutches the colorful beads that hang from her neck and begins to pray. Surrounded by the soft light of dawn, she begs for protection and salvation. She asks Obatala, the ancient, for his wisdom. Observing Elisa’s prayer, WaLiLa sees a world of difference between the tightly-clenched body next to her and the whirling image in white who introduced her to this island. If there is ever a time for bodyspeak, for exalting arms and passionate wrists, WaLiLa thinks, this is the time.

Elisa’s plum-black lips move mechanically, pushing out prayers without passion. The gravity of her plea is communicated by the tremble of her lower lip. After the prayer, she inhales deeply and lumbers to the door. When she twists the doorknob, the door refuses to budge. Leaning her shoulder against the crumpled piece of wood her front door has become, she uses her heft to force it open.

The first things to greet her when she crosses the threshold are concrete shards, they crackle underfoot and grind into the floor. She sinks to her knees. Her body tenses as she realizes it is the fifteen-year-old concrete head of Elegua, the watcher, shattered before her. Elisa draws in her breath sharply and wonders if Elegua’s destruction was the result of the fire or the cause of it. She drops a small prayer of apology like a rainshower from the dark clouds of her lips.

Elisa stands and leads her sons into the house. WaLiLa watches as the blackness of the house swallows their bodies. She does not enter. The sun batiks patterns of heat on her bare neck as it rises in the sky. The scent of dew resting on thick flower petals slowly drips across her face. Her being-center leaps. You have not fueled since your arrival, her message-center notes.

WaLiLa curses herself for allowing the ceremony to distract her from collecting flowers. When her fuel banks are empty, she will no longer be able to transform human air into a breathable substance. One of the ancestors’ admonitions rushes into her consciousness like a clap of thunder. WaLiLa, she imagines them motioning, you never follow the rules. Upon arrival to Earth, the first order of business is fuel-collecting. But most times motion is not married to my arrival. I come alone, in quiet night. This time I plunged into a dark sea. A dark sea not empty, but full of beings. And they gathered tightly around me. And I swam with them. She pushes her fingers against her lips and wonders how she could have forgotten.

Her message-center announces that she has five hours of fuel remaining. She slumps into a body sigh. She