The Temple of My Familiar Read online

  "Finally, and not a minute too soon, for he was sick of so much death, and he said the blood from the slaughterhouse stayed under his fingernails, and that would not do, Rafe got the job as sleeping-car porter. Lissie took in sewing and worked in private homes as a domestic, and with all our pay pooled together, we managed. This was a white neighborhood then, like it's becoming again now, but there were two houses on our block that had Spanish-looking people who were probably gangsters living in them. One of these houses was just across the street from us, and the other was next door. The men would speak to us as pleasantly as could be, and so we weren't too afraid of them, even though they did make a habit of sitting on their stoops in shirtsleeves, breaking down, cleaning, and reassembling their sizable collection of guns. I think it was their presence that kept the really white people from trying to run us out. They'd pitched a fit when the old Frenchman died and his niece let Rafe buy the house. She lived in France, anyway, and liked Rafe. Really liked him, if you know what I mean. What did she know or care about 'crazy American race prejudice,' as she called it, in an accent that did make it sound like the silliest thing. And then, too, Rafe was willing to pay more for the house than any white person would.

  "No doubt the neighbors thought the house too fine for 'niggers.' And really we were there illegally. I don't think black people were allowed in that part of town back then. But we were so discreet they hardly ever saw us. We never sat or stood on the front lawn, or sat on our stoop; it just didn't exist for us as part of the house. There was an alley behind the house, and we always went in the back way. But soon another house was sold to lightbright blacks, and another. They didn't like us either--we were dark compared to them--but we said to hell with them and began to be able to relax a little bit. We kept it spotless, this house, the grass clipped and the hedges trimmed. In the early years we worked on the grass and hedges at night. It was nicer than anything we'd every dreamed of living in.

  "Lissie liked Rafe a lot, and he liked her and Lulu. I thought the world of Rafe, and I believe he felt the same about me. I remember telling him all about Lissie and me. I wasn't embarrassed or afraid he'd misunderstand. He was curious about our relationship, because in his house she and I slept in separate rooms. She slept in the back bedroom overlooking the yard and I slept in the front room that faced the street, with the baby. Lulu, I mean.

  "All the passion I'd had for her mother went into my love of Lulu, and from a little teeny baby she could wrap me around her finger. I doted on that child. Lissie was a good mother, but aloof. She didn't seem to be present for the child. Always off somewhere roaming through the ages. She started seeing the photographer fellow again, not to sleep with--she hated him in that way--but to model for him. He couldn't understand how different she could look from picture to picture; he said sometimes he couldn't even believe the picture he'd taken was of Lissie, and just to punish him she never told him anything. He was the kind of ego-bound person who wouldn't have been able to hear or believe her if she had. She was excited about how each picture would turn out, and I eventually understood that God had managed, with photography, to show Lissie she was right to think she was as many women as she thought she was. It was a big load off her mind to know she wasn't crazy.

  "Life is very different when you have a good friend. I've seen people without special friends, close friends. Other men, especially. For some reason men don't often make and keep friends. This is a real tragedy, I think, because in a way, without a tight male friend, you never really are able to see yourself. That is because part of shaping ourselves is done by others; and a lot of our shaping comes from that one close friend who is something like us. It was real special between Rafe and me. I was the homebody, the married husband and father, the painter. Quiet. Needing Lissie to lead me by the hand. He was even physically different from me: larger and taller, and darker, too. I admired him all my life. He was such a bachelor! No woman ever got next to Rafe for longer than a couple of weeks. He'd go at it hot and heavy for a few evenings--but always came home to wind up the night in his own bed--and then one day I'd ask when or whether he was going out and he'd say no. 'No, Bro.' And he'd laugh. I'd be glad, secretly, because it meant he'd be home with us. Lissie would make something especially nice for dinner; I would be sure we had a good fire going. And Lissie, Rafe, Lulu, and I would settle in the living room after dinner for an evening of cards and listening to records, of which your uncle always had the latest, because he was a wonderful dancer, too, along with everything else.

  "Sometimes I think he would fancy himself too heartsick over his most recent ladylove to enjoy himself with us; then he would settle himself in his room--he had the big bedroom then--and read dime novels while propped up in bed. Rafe was one for dressing gowns and slippers, and I remember he had a fancy blue-and-white kimono, silk, that he said came from Japan. He was elegant! He pomaded his hair, shaped not only his mustache but his eyebrows, too, and he smoked clove cigarettes. No, he wasn't a fairy; just a man of distinction! He had a Victrola in his bedroom and pictures of several of his lady friends on the mantel, and he'd put on something highly suggestive and melancholy to listen to, and he'd smoke and read and drink the evening away. By morning he'd be cured of that particular lady friend, and if it was his day off, he'd be ready to play with Lulu.

  "Next to her mama and me, Lulu loved her uncle Rafe. At times I thought she loved him better than us. He was shaved and dressed just so every time she saw him, for she wasn't allowed in his rooms. The three of us were extremely careful of his privacy. Often we wouldn't know whether he was home--there would be no sound whatsoever from his floor. And then Lulu would get to dragging her feet as she passed to and fro before his bedroom door, and pretty soon she would say she heard her uncle Rafe gargling.

  "We could have moved, but it was pleasant and felt like family being at Rafe's. In a house where two men cared for her, Lissie recovered from the weakness that followed the loss of baby Jack. She recovered her strength and style, and began to put on a little weight. I could see she was coming into a bloom of womanhood that almost stopped your breath. Ripeness. Her eyes took on greater depth from her sadness; her mouth curved in a smile that still held a little hint of the timelessness of pain. Even her brow struck me as somehow humbled, and because of that I found myself touching it more often, brushing back her hair, smoothing out her eyebrows. But the most engaging thing now was the way she talked. It made you think of water, so soft and gentle, but sometimes you also heard the rapids. She laughed more, too, a knowledgeable laughter. There was in her voice and in her laughter a sound that moved me so much: the sound of acceptance of her lot, and ... the sound of gratitude.

  "Lissie had forgiven me, because she had understood. She loved me still, but she had let go. And she was grateful to be alive and yet have all she did have. She had me and Lulu and Rafe, for instance.

  "She threw herself as much as she could, considering her built-in distractions, into mothering Lulu, who was a born tomboy that kept Lissie running after her. She cared for me the way she always had. She kept encouraging me to paint, and she found a place where my work could be sold to tourists in downtown Baltimore. I wasn't using house paint anymore, but watercolors and oils, and this was heaven to me. She also encouraged me to take night classes in English and botany that were offered at the new colored high school. The English made it easier for me to talk to people who didn't always understand the English we spoke on the Island, and the botany improved the way I drew plants.

  "Years later there were friends of ours who guessed what might have happened. Friends who recognized the resemblance of our son Anatole--named after the old Frenchman--to Rafe. I know they pitied me. No doubt they thought Lissie and Rafe were having an affair behind my back. This was not the case.

  "It had been years since I made love to Lissie, so long I never thought about it or hardly remembered it had been possible. We still enjoyed each other's company. We might shop together or walk with Lulu to her school. We might hug or hold ha
nds, but we'd always done that. We were back, in fact, where we started with each other as children, before Lissie really began to notice your uncle Rafe. Notice him as a man, you know.

  "Looking back, I can see it was bound to happen. Both Lissie and Rafe were knockouts. When the three of us dressed up to go out to a party, even little Lulu went oooo! at the two of them. They had flamboyance. Both of them loved clothes, and Lissie liked to be a different woman for every ball. She loved things like sequins, baubles that sparkled, and shawls with tassels and fringe. Rafe liked his white silk shirts, shiny dress slippers, and fur-collared coat. He was the kind of Negro who, when he dressed up to go out, carried calfskin gloves and a silver-headed cane. He fancied himself a rogue, and to the extent that he could pull off his adventures before about two o'clock in the morning, when he just had to be home snug in his own bed, he was.

  "Actually, he was a proper match for Lissie."

  "LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I was showing you my temple," said Miss Lissie. "I don't know where it was, but it was a simple square one-room structure, very adobe or Southwestern-looking, with poles jutting out at the ceiling line and the windows set in deep. It was painted a rich dust coral and there were lots of designs--many, turquoise and deep blue, like Native American symbols for rain and storm--painted around the top. It was beautiful, though small, and I remembered going there for the ceremonies dressed in a long white cotton robe. I was tall then, and stately, with thick black hair that I wore in a bun. The other thing my temple made me think of was the pyramids in Mexico, though I'm satisfied it wasn't made of stone but of painted mud.

  "Anyway, my familiar--what you might these days, unfortunately, call a 'pet'--was a small, incredibly beautiful creature that was part bird, for it was feathered, part fish, for it could swim and had a somewhat fish/bird shape, and part reptile, for it scooted about like geckoes do, and it was all over the place while I talked to you. Its movements were graceful and clever, its expression mischievous and full of humor. It was alive! You, by the way, Suwelo were a white man, apparently, in that life, very polite, very well-to-do, and seemingly very interested in our ways.

  "My little familiar, no bigger than my hand, slithered and skidded here and there in the place outside the temple where we sat. Its predominant color was blue, but there was red and green, and flecks of gold and cerise. And purple. Yes. Its head was that of a bird. Did I say that already?

  "Skittering about the way that it did was so distracting while we talked that I took it up into my hands and carried it some distance from us and placed it on the ground with a clear-glass bowl over it. As soon as I'd come back and sat down, however, I heard a noise like a muffled shot. I went over to the bowl, and, sure enough, the familiar had broken through. There was a small hole in the top. I looked about and found another bowl, a heavy white one, very slick and with very thick sides. My familiar was lying looking up at me curiously, resting up from its labor. It did not try to run as I put this white bowl on top of it. Almost before I sat down I heard another noise. When I went back, my familiar was rushing furiously about in the snow. Everything was suddenly now very cold. It was as beautiful as ever though, my familiar. How or even why I would do what I next did is beyond me, but I think it was a stupid reflex of human pride. For I understood quite well by now that all of this activity on the familiar's part was about freedom, and that by my actions I was destroying our relationship. In any event, not to be outdone--and suddenly there were dozens of your people, white people, standing about watching this contest--I next imprisoned my beautiful little familiar under a metal washtub. I paid little attention to the coldness or the snow and did not even think how cruel and torturous for it this would be. Surely it would not now be able to escape. I went back to where we were seated, you and I, and attempted to carry on with our conversation, which was about temples, and about my temple in particular. The sun was just setting, and it bathed the small, shiny coral structure in gold. It was a splendid sight. I felt such happiness that it was mine and I thought of the peace that came over me, deep, like sleep, when I entered its doors.

  "Next we heard a rumbling, as if from a volcano, under our seats. As if power was being sucked along in streams from everywhere and converging at one spot under the snow. All of us, you, me, the white people dressed so strangely in high heels and fur coats, were drawn to the quaking washtub, which seemed now to be on the bottom steps of an enormous white stone building in a different city and a different century. We could not believe that a small creature, no larger than a hand, could break through metal with its fragile birdlike head. We gazed in amazement as, with a mighty whoosh, and as if from the very depths of the sea, the little familiar broke through the bottom of the tub and out into the open air. It looked at me with pity as it passed. Then, using wings it had never used before, it flew away. And I was left with only you and the rest of your people on the steps of a cold stone building, the color of cheap false teeth, in a different world from my own, in a century that I would never understand. Except by remembering the beautiful little familiar, who was so cheerful and loyal to me, and whom I so thoughtlessly, out of pride and distraction, betrayed."

  "THERE WERE FLIES EVERYWHERE." That is what Arveyda told Carlotta about the place where she was born.

  "And what do you think?" he asked.

  She didn't know what to think. Arveyda was back, but not her mother. She tried not to think of Zede.

  "They were shooting a film there! In Guatuzocan!" he said.

  Carlotta had never heard the name.

  "It was about an ancient Indian goddess," he continued, "tall and blonde, like Bo Derek, who falls in love with a modern white anthropologist who had stumbled through a cave entrance and into the prehistoric era in which the goddess lived. It was very funny once you understood there was nothing you could do about it but laugh. Your mother found one of her old friends, a woman who looked a hundred years old, though she was no older than Zede, and they sat under a tree watching the production of the movie most of the day. Her friend, Hidae, very dark and very wrinkled, had been hired as an extra and represented the ancient ignorant Indians from whom the smart blonde 'Indian goddess,' apparently an albino, had sprung. They were in stitches over how the goddess was dressed. In a bikini made of the pigeon feathers that are sold to the tourists. And fingernail polish and lipstick that looked like blood. On her head she was required to wear a colossal headdress, and in this headdress there were fleas. The goddess scratched her head, fanned flies, drooped from the humidity and boredom, grew sallow from the bologna sandwiches, and watched the white anthropologist steal all her people's treasures without lifting a finger, because ... she loved him!

  "But it was a job. I mean, for Zede and her friend and for the others in the village. Because Zede spoke English, she got a job on the production crew. She translated. The prison the place had been when you and your mother were there had indeed become a village. Or I should say had become once again a village, since it had been a village that belonged to your father's people, los indios. As in Australia, where convicts eventually became a country, the guards and slaves who had been settled in Guatuzocan to grow papaya had become a village.

  "Only Hidae and six others remained of the slaves your mother had known. The rest had succumbed to the poor food, hard work, the heat and jungle diseases, plus the terrorism of the guards. Most of the women who'd borne children for their captors were dead, but their captors were not. They raped each new batch of slaves and made slave wives of the ones they preferred, ignoring the old and battered ones for whom they no longer felt lust. These women produced children. This placed the guards in the curious position of being masters over their own and each other's offspring, and where there used to be harmony in their power over so many helpless people, now there was hatred and disgust. Each captor, you see, inevitably begat a favorite son, and this son he did not want either to acknowledge or to have mistreated by any other person in authority other than himself. Then, too, there was the inevitable rape of his daug
hters by buddies trained not to care about her resemblance to him. Sometimes he did not recognize it himself. A hell.

  "The papaya fields were yielding good crops, and the money from their sale poured in to the plantation owners from Europe and North America; the work continued hard, though it was not as horrendous as the clearing of the jungle and the planting of the trees had been. At first it puzzled us why the movie-production company was making a movie about pregringo historic Indian life in the middle of an enormous, modern, rigidly rowed papaya plantation. But when Zede asked the movie director, he pointed out that he was making a nonstereotyped, progressive movie about the Indians, something very unusual for Americans to do; the plantation showed that the Indians had been not lazy at all, but industrious, even from earliest times. 'So there!' your mother said, when she reported this to me and the other wrinkled Indians. And we all laughed.