Sunday April 26, 1998 12:00PM
'At noon parrots sleep and diamondbacks work down the trees toward the cooler undergrowth. At noon the water in the mouths of orchids left there by the breakfast rain is warm. Children stick their fingers in them and scream as though scalded' --
Tarbaby, Toni Morrisson
It was a dark late afternoon with a thundercloud sky. I sat and talked to mom about moving. About being in the middle of the city with cars speeding by. I was above the city streets looking down on my new home as we talked and my church was 3 blocks down. There was no greater joy in the world than walking, than moving from one place to another, than in being in control of my life, my new job beginning, my wife and home where everything was rich and full of the feeling that this was what I was suppposed to do, simply because I chose it. There was a subway I could depend on, a feeling of being capable of existing on my own decisions, and an intense beauty to life that seeped through the walls of the buildings around me. I sat on the front porch of a friend's house in the middle of the afternoon. The sky was black and the leaves on the trees were vibrant green and a cool breeze blew and the trees whispered as the white underside of the leaves flashed, as if tickled by the chance that it might pour. A car sped by, hurried to its destination and the the brake lights in the distance, orange and red piercing the gray. The granite steps were cool, rough, speckled black and white and I turned towards the house.
His blond hair was disturbed by another gust of cool air. At two years old he was calm, peaceful, somehow knowlegeable of his fate and secure in it. He was radiant with pure gold translucent skin. How had he survived this long? Surely he understood he was different, that in a week his disease would kill him and we would still not understand where he came from, what his purpose was? He was completely foreign to anything anybody had ever seen. His mother, now missing, held the only possiblity of his survival and we had people looking everywhere for her. The child glowed with some kind of inner light that shined through his skin, sharp, gold, yellow and orange. His eyes shined light into the dark grayness of the afternoon. His father sat behind him and I could only stare fixated. The boy spoke something, I can't remember, and held out his hands asking to be held. How could I not? I somehow knew he was human and that he was going to die in a week and so I picked him up, his skin warm and soft.
The girl on the next step down suggested that we go for a walk. I got up with the boy in my arms, the child still glowing, and walked into the street. The black pavement was warm and I was barefoot, and the road curved down a hill and led to a river and the three of us descended. As I walked I felt the child in my arms and felt an almost fatherly love. This was a child, this was a soul, this was a spirit, this was a human being able to experience, able to think, able to understand life, able to have joy and sorrow and sadness. He was real and living and breathing.
The river was deep blue-green, quiet but strong, moving swiftly and I became afraid the child would want to climb in and so I turned to walk back up the hill. The child strained in my arms and I began to panic and hold him tighter. As I kept walking the boy turned over in my arms and as he did he changed shape. His skin became hard and it rattled and crackled as he turned into a yellow and beige snake and slipped through my hands. 'His father's going to kill me if I lose him,' I thought as he slipped to the ground and quickly made his way to the water.
The storm had arrived and our boat was being tossed on the waves. Thunder was rolling across the sea and we were excited we'd found her. We'd found her in her watery grave. We were shouting over the noise of the wind and rain and thunder as we suited up to dive. Out on the deck the storm was screaming and the boat was being rocked violently as we dipped over the side into the warm water. There was silence as we drifted downward. 'This is it,' I heard over the headphones, a steady breathing from the other divers. In the water above us lightning flashed and sparkled down quietly into the darkness. Thunder, muffled, vibrated the water around us. A spotlight shown to the ocean floor across a woman's body and my fellow divers breathed deeply. She was here. She was laying peacefully over a rock. As we drew nearer we could hear her heart beating. She was alive, she was breathing, and her white gown was blowing in the water. We grabbed her and carried her to the surface. My vision was intermittantly blurred by the water was we tried to get the mother to the boat. Once on deck everyone was shouting with joy, getting ready to perform CPR. The storm was raging and we were pelted with warm rain. Then I woke up.
