by Kate Green

©2003 Kate Green

Chapter One

crawl

Reflect on the darkness, where fear is lost. Reflect on the darkness, where light begins. Reflect on the darkness, where gold is dancing.                 Janine Canan

 

Where are you?
Why won't you answer me!
For once, can't you tell me what to do?

Speaking of whom... reel it in!
You're at work.

     Ignoring the undulating rumbles of thunder that challenged her resolve, she hauled her awareness back to the present and anchored herself to the comforts of her office with its pale golden walls, richly patterned furniture, and cloisonne vases overflowing with every variety of flower that bloomed in her garden.

     When she greeted her four o'clock appointment, the woman shook out her umbrella and dragged herself to her usual perch on the couch. Morgan met her . client's eyes with what she hoped was the open compassion she felt two layers up from that clenched place in her gut that longed to scream, not listen

     The woman's chin jerked. "I'm losing myself." Lightning sizzled behind the window nearest them, followed by an explosion of thunder that resonated through their bodies and heightened the fear in the woman's dark eyes.
      "My job is wearing me down, I can't do enough for my kids, and when it comes to the house... my husband never even breaks a sweat. Where am I in all this?"

   Morgan gazed at her hands through her tumbles of silver-streaked auburn hair and fingered the gold fringe that edged her velvet chair. The woman's words throbbed in her temples.

      This was the same yearning she'd heard from three clients in a row that afternoon. But how could she help them when her  own rebel angels were screaming that she was a workaday drone with nothing to show for her life except good kids, a job well done, and an unfortunately long list of relationships she'd fought to keep alive but eventually had to take off life support?

     Where was she in all this? Were she and her clients self-absorbed head-cases, jamming the works of what could be a better world?  Were they as indistinguishable from one another as the countless candies  hurtling down Lucy Ricardo's nightmare conveyer belt?

But we can't be suffering like this--striving, reaching--for no reason.

      Morgan sucked in a jagged breath, smoothed the flowing dress that fell across her plump thighs and wished her legs were long enough to stretch across the floor, as her client's did. She flipped off her sandals and pulled her tapestry footstool closer with a brightly pedicured foot.

      "Let"s take these concerns one at a time, so they're not overwhelming. Which one troubles you most?"

     "My job is the worst. It's a vulture convention." The woman grinned before her mouth went tight. "Everyone is circling. There's no creativity, no vision, no mission, just a weirdly passive hacking away at whatever comes along."

      Her words hit Morgan in the chest and reverberated like a gong. How long had she herself been in a holding pattern, ravenous for something new but unable to envision what that might look like? Her life was good. But it wasn't right. Whatever her path was meant to be, she wasn't on it.

      "What is it you want from work?" Morgan said. She plucked at the sunny swirls on the arm of her silk dress, unable to stop the chant running through her head.

Where am I going?
Why am I here?
What do I want?

     It was like an advertising slogan she couldn't make herself forget, but more ominous. She seized control of her attention and worked to suppress the last line. It echoed in her awareness anyway, wrapping its well known chill around each vertebra in her back.

What if I never find out?

     But she wasn't going to let that happen. It would be a living death. Besides, she'd never let anythingstop her before. She'd fought her father's groping hands and the emptiness of her marriage and divorce. And she'd had the courage to move to the South and make a normal life for her kids in Grandmama's old Victorian. So she certainly wasn't going to give up now. She drew a deep breath, pushed her feet into the footstool, and straightened her spine.

How would it feel to be certain--in my heart, my soul, my body--that I'm fulfilling my life purpose exactly?

     "Morgan?"

     Morgan flicked her hair off her shoulders.
"I'm sorry. I was wondering how many other women--throughout the world--share your hunger for something more. I know I do. Yet each of us is alone, isolated by the circumstances of our lives, pecking at the walls of our prisons like baby birds struggling to break free from their eggs. I wonder--could we be poised on the edge of a transformation as profound as the one the chicks are fighting toward?"

      "You've always told me there are wings on the other side of our pain."

     "Right. But what if the whole flock takes flight and discovers that together we can change the world?" Morgan sank back in her chair. She was losing herself in questions she could barely ask, let alone answer. "Let's get back to your situation at work."

 Weren't these patterns of experience, these coincidences--her clients reflecting her own agitation--supposed to mean something?

 But where's the meaning in restlessness, dissatisfaction, yearning?

      "I hate my job because I want my work to fill me up--and it doesn't."

      The pastel light from the Tiffany lamps flickered, then died, along with the air conditioning. Morgan rose, lit a candle, and placed it on the table between them.

      "Sorry," she said. "This is one of those old Hopewellen buildings that's been around since before the Civil War. I think it's morally opposed to electricity."
She glanced outside. "At least the rain has quieted." But the sky was still boiling blackness. She was grateful her son's plane had gotten off safely this morning.

     It would have been agony to know Ian was in the air during this storm. She could barely see the wide stream of water coursing through the parking lot and down the residential street before pooling around the overworked sewer. At least the massive willow oaks that lined the road had stopped tossing and stood in their usual repose, lacing fingers with their companions across the way.

     Inside, the rising heat and humidity wrapped the women in a dark sanctuary, a womb of gray velvet light. The warmth had coaxed open the gardenia buds she'd picked this morning in the prickling Carolina damp. They floated in a jade lotus-shaped bowl next to the candle, suffusing the room with their exotic scent.

     Morgan stared into the candle's pulsing flame. "Perhaps the answers you seek lie in your unhappiness, like seeds, waiting for you to find and water them."

Where did that come from?

     Her words drifted up from a place so deep it was beyond understanding, as did the peace that gently filled her body. Were her prayers being answered in the messages beginning to flow through her?

     "What do you mean?" her client said.

     "Exactly what are you unhappy about?"

     The woman began to speak, but Morgan put her finger to her lips. "Don't settle for the first answer that comes to mind. Close your eyes and breathe. Drop your awareness from your head into your feet. Good. Now put one hand on your heart and the other on your belly and ask your troubles what they're here to teach you, what gifts they bring, what they need from you."

     As her client looked within, Morgan tried to follow her own instructions, to reach the source of her pain and learn from it.

      But something stopped her. Ancient fingers, icy and familiar, coiled around her spine and a voice whispered that she'd never find her calling.

     This voice felt alien, as if it belonged to someone else. But she'd received enough counseling and training to know better. She'd thought she was past this yet here she was again, projecting her feelings, trying to pretend she didn't have to take responsibility for them by imagining they weren't part of her.

     The only way to create a shift was to own this dread, the same terror she used to feel when she'd startle awake to find her father leering above her.

      Her stomach lurched as the thing gripped her harder.

     The next morning, Morgan awakened slowly. She was tangled in a damp mass of seldom-laundered polyester sheets in the bed of Adam Mandrake, the most recent man with whom she'd tried to find a corral for her soul.

     Sweat prickled along her hairline, pasting her hair flat against her head, and the mingled odors of mildew and unwashed male laundry assaulted her senses. Even above the futile clatter of his air conditioner, she could hear his pet pig, Sheila, snorting and rooting outside. The night before, Sheila had shown her more affection than Adam had. Now he was stirring, and it took only two words out of his mouth to confirm her suspicions that she'd wasted the year she'd spent with him.

     Suddenly they were on their feet, naked, arguing, hurling words across the room at each other faster than she could think. Yet she was experiencing their fight in slow motion--like a dream in which the action was underwater.

     He was usually so quiet, his tall, tight body so controlled. But now he was a trapped animal, frantic and wild. She could imagine him thrashing against the bars of a cage, the whites of his eyes flashing and great white loops of spittle trailing from his mouth.

He wouldn't hurt me.

     But then why were her calves tensed, the balls of her feet poised to flee? And why did she feel nervous each time his pacing cut her off from the door?

      The scene went in and out of focus, like a bad movie shifting between what was meant to be and what was.

This isn't happening.

     Her first summer without the responsibilities of children was beginning today. It was supposed to be a respite, a retreat, a chance to discover her true path--the woman she was without children tugging at her time.

     Had she ever faced such freedom?

     Certainly not since college, when she got pregnant with her daughter Sierra. Childbirth had launched her into a maze of marriage, mothering, graduate school, work, and divorce. Life became simpler fifteen years ago when Grandmama suggested she bring her kids to the South and move in with her.

     But they'd lost Grandmama, Sierra married Rich last fall, and Ian needed her less and less.

     Still, Morgan hadn't had a real break since she was a child.

If you could call that a break.
Hiding from my father's hands and my mother's hollow eyes.
And their fights.

     She shuddered.
This felt like a bad rerun of her childhood.

     She tried to calm Adam, as she had her parents. Her heart felt as bare as their bodies. But nothing in his face told her that her words were hitting home. His eyes were narrow pinpoints of brilliant black light. They held her, bored into her.

     Morgan taught the rules of a clean fight to her clients and she always followed them. She could say what she meant, even raise her voice, and still behave respectfully. But when he called her a fat bitch, she lost it.

     "Ever hear of Viagra? It's not my fault you can't keep it up anymore."

     Later, she wondered why she happened to notice his hand at the exact moment his thumb locked around the handle of the iron. She watched each individual finger curl around the handle, beginning with the smallest. The image of a chorus line flashed through her mind, rows of legs fanning down from a kick.

          He paused. Then his lower lip curled down oddly. He drew his arm back over his right shoulder and lifted his left leg as if he were about to pitch a fast ball.

     The iron sailed toward her skull, pointed end first, like a missile. She seemed to watch it forever as it flew toward her, heading straight between her eyes as though guided by a built-in homing device, the cord trailing behind like a blaze of rocket fuel.

     She actually had time to think that if she put her arms up to shield herself, she'd be admitting this was happening. Their year together was ending in less than a second. It would be more dignified to remain motionless and simply look at him. Let him see what he had done.

     Of course that crazy alarm never did go off. Yet Clarissa Albright jumped out of bed, eyes wide, at the exact moment her digital clock read seven a.m.

What am I?
Time's slave?

     But if she hadn't awakened, Frankie and Martin wouldn't have made it to their Y.M.C.A. camp. And she wouldn't have had their cramped apartment to herself so she could figure out how to stop the nuclear dump.

     Still, Clarissa hated belonging to the clock. Back on the reservation, Big Mom would have leaned back in the old porch rocker, opened her face into that toothless grin, and chided her softly, calling her a fish--flop, flop, flopping on the river bank.

     "Time is a river," Big Mom would have said, her obsidian eyes drifting into other worlds while her round hands danced like otters. "Slip into the water, Granddaughter. Give yourself to the current. Let it carry you. Listen to the river's whisperings and let her help you find your way."

     The laugh that rumbled through Big Mom's body would have come up through her belly from somewhere deep in the earth as she patted Clarissa's cheek with a warm palm, the black pools of her eyes disappearing in a smile as furrowed as caked clay.

     But she wasn't on the reservation anymore with it's tall pines, domed mountains, and hooded valleys.

I'm a city girl now.

     If you could call Hopewellen, North Carolina, a city. Clarissa blinked hard. Big Mom was dead and she was alive. And whether she liked it or not, the nuclear dump wouldn't be built in the forgiving fluidity of Indian time — or stopped that way, either. But she wouldn't stand for the threat of a nuclear accident that could poison all the beings and destroy the land for her children's children.

     Her boys' raised voices snapped Clarissa's attention back to the present.

     "Only girls bring stuffed animals to camp." Martin's back was arched, his butt protruding, as he brought his face tauntingly close to his little brother's.

     "Shut up, Martin." To keep his lip from trembling, Frankie stuck out his lip at his older brother. He'd never slept without Snowy, his threadbare stuffed kitten.

     "Boys, boys," Clarissa said. "Breakfast is ready. Come on, now. I'm counting on you two to get along."

     At the table, a tear slid down Frankie's cheek, so she took him into the bedroom and closed the door. When she pulled him in for a hug, inhaling his warm, little-boy smells, he began to cry.

     "Frankie, I bet all the other nine-year-olds are worried about the same thing. Look. We can wrap this shirt around Snowy and no one will see him, but you'll know he's there."

     "I don't have room for all my stuff then." He drew a ragged breath.

     "Sure you do, Baby. Let's see what you've got here."

     Quickly, she helped Frankie consolidate. Then she spent a little extra time with Martin, whom she knew was going through a similar struggle in spite of his manly twelve-year-old posturing.By the time they got to the Y, the bus was already loaded with kids and gear. It was just as well--prolonged goodbyes wouldn't have helped.

     As the bus pulled away, Clarissa squared her shoulders and set her jaw. She had almost two full days to figure out what to do about the nuclear dump slated to be built not far from Hopewellen. Nuclear waste was to be hauled in from seven states, inviting nuclear accidents on every major thoroughfare in North Carolina and encouraging terrorist attack. She knew she had to stop it. What she didn't know was: how?

     With the boys away, she could think.

     The morning, however, brought no inspiration, no ideas, not even the germ of a plan. The walls of her steaming second-floor apartment closed in and her efforts yielded nothing but a slamming headache. Without telling herself why, she put on a crisp white halter-dress and went for a walk. Now she was massaging her temples in a dark, chilly, neighborhood lounge while outside the sun was melting even the air.

 How can one woman stop a nuclear dump?

     Perching primly on the barstool nearest the wall, she tried to look as if she were at home in the Back Street Bar. Eight years ago, she'd have blended in perfectly.

     "I'd like a brandy, please," she said. "In a snifter."

      No matter how hard she tried, she hadn't come up to her own expectations. So she might as well go back--all the way back--to her old ways. But when her brandy arrived, she stared into it and didn't drink.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home.
Which I am.

     She pulled herself down with the familiar words of the old spiritual, a remnant from her Bible-thumping ex-husband, Ray. The Ray of Hope who turned out to be Ray the Dope. Ray was probably out there witnessing right now, one hand around the waist of a woman half his age, the other fingering the flask in his suit pocket. He'd be carrying on about the Lord but his mind would be due south, wrapped around his Johnson.

     What did Ray have to complain about? He thought he was oppressed because he was black. And he probably was.

     But at least blacks accepted him. Try being black, Cherokee, and white. Nowhere, nobody, and invisible. Indians used the "n" word to describe her, white people just knew she couldn't be one of them, and blacks thought she was too white.

     Of course black people thought Cherokee blood was cool. And, judging by their seldom-discussed pecking order, a certain amount of white blood had its advantages too — but only up to a point that Clarissa's strange mix seemed to cross. So they called her "zebra" and "honky."

     She swirled her brandy and watched it glide back down to the bottom of the glass. The first sip would burn at the back of her throat.

...a motherless child...

     Clarissa longed for the mother she couldn't remember, the one who'd left her with Big Mom as a newborn, the woman who had the skills to help her in the ways of the world as Big Mom couldn't.
     
After all, her mother had sent money to the reservation for her and her Cherokee grandmother. Regularly. Plenty of it, too. To have that much to give away, her mother must have at least figured out how to stand up for herself. But then again, why not?
      She was white.

     "Hey there, Serenity!" Serena hated surprise visits from the neighbors, but this time an interruption might be a good thing. She'd been fretting about her daughter all day.

How am I going to find out where you are, Clarissa?
I can't ask anyone on the reservation.
Every relative you have would call you before I got the chance.
I want to be the one to tell you I want to see you.

     Travis bumped along Serena's driveway on his vintage John Deere tractor, then crossed the field to where she was spreading compost in one of her vegetable gardens. Sunlight glinted off his tanned forearms and the fringe of white hair that stuck out straight below his cap.

      Serena straightened from her work and threw down her hoe. She flipped her thin white braids behind her, arched her wiry back, and dug her knuckles hard into the base of her spine. Like a rain soaked hound, she shook herself from head to toe. Then she growled.

Fifty-nine is too damned old to be working this hard.

      She moved toward Travis in her best imitation of an easy stride. In her eight years on Mother's Mountain, she'd proudly resisted hiring help, installing electricity or a telephone, or putting in running water. Of course she could easily afford to build an extravagant estate on the ridge and light up every tree on the mountain like Christmas at Macy's. But living simply had been a relief and an adventure--especially after the disturbing entanglements of academia. She was no longer under attack by brain-dead academics for her 'radical' ideas and 'uncooperative' ways.

     And she was proud each time she filled her odd assortment of containers at the spring and loaded her wagon with water for herself, her garden, and her dogs, cats, chickens, and rabbits. When she lit her kerosene lanterns and stoked the fire in her wood-burning stove, she felt superior. "If the rest of the monied world learned to live as I do," she often thought, "humanity would not be blindly hurtling toward extinction."

     But now her back hurt and her joints creaked in the morning like the old barn door swinging on its brittle hinges. Farm work was becoming more a burden than an adventure. She was slowing down like her old Australian Shepherd, Virginia Woof, who didn't do much of anything anymore except follow patches of sunlight around the cabin floor.

Though she'd rarely admit it, Serena longed for an easier life. A life in which one could put one's feet up at the end of the day and read a book or attend to the evening news--and soak one's joints in a hot bath.

What am I grumbling about?
Look at Travis. He's got fifteen years on me and works from dawn to dusk.

     "I brung you your mail. "Travis cut off his motor.

     "That's kind of you."

     "Couldn't help it. I took a notion when I drove by your mailbox and all. Kinda give me the allovers to see it stuffed to bulging past noon. I was afeared you'd up and done it"

     "Done what?"

     "Took off on your broom. Folks said they seen you." Travis's eyes crinkled. His laughter sputtered into a series of dry coughs.

     "Nope. Tell them to watch out on Halloween, though."

     "Best not"

     "Whatever you think."

     "Well, I'm mighty glad to see you up and around. Plumb near scared the fire outta me when I thought you was laid up, what with you being alone up here and all with no water and no..." Travis spit a long arc of tobacco juice. "No nothin'. "

     Serena couldn't help smiling. " How's Elsie?"

     "They ain't a bit a tellin'. She run off to that Wal-Mart with her sisters." Travis wheezed and cackled. "Hope she saved something out. It's more'n a week before the next Social Security."

      Travis's grin exposed a patchwork of tobacco-stained teeth as he leaned down and plunked her mail into her hand. Jane's letter was on top. The envelope was addressed on a computer. Good news would have been jotted exuberantly on a handwritten envelope, so Morgan had refused to see her again. She felt her face flush with anger.

Damn you, Morgan Forrester!

     Halfway through his meal, Jake Miller shoved his food back in the cooler and dug his back into the old chestnut tree he was leaning against. He picked up the leather-bound journal Morgan had given him for his thirtieth birthday and ran his fingers over its buttery surface.

      Staring out over the grounds of the Buchanan sisters'estate, Jake watched his mind circling back to thoughts of Morgan — though he knew he should be finishing his lunch, going over the books for his landscaping business, and placing orders during the gathering heat. Then he'd have time during the cooler evening hours to work on the ponds the Buchanans wanted done yesterday.

     At first, he'd tried to discourage the sisters' plan to build an upper pond joined by a curving stream to a lower one, with the water collected in the lower pond and then pumped back up. To his way of thinking, that was trendy and contrived. Why couldn't the two ponds be separate, the larger one for swans and the smaller one for a water garden and goldfish?

      But then he understood what the women had in mind. Connecting the ponds would give them a path beside a stream, a smooth walkway each could navigate on her own, Dixie with her walker and Merilee with her motorized wheelchair. Dixie had had a stroke over the holidays and was facing her first summer of being unable to push Merilee along the public path by the river.

      So now Jake wanted the sisters to have their pond, even though undertaking a project of that size during peak growing season meant he'd need to hire a third worker in order to keep his other clients happy. That's another thing he should be getting on with this afternoon. Good help was hard to find, especially in the heat of summer.

      He'd decided to cut a wide path along the stream so the Buchanans could move side by side for a change. The walkway would be the color of the red clay along their beloved river. When he duplicated a section of their favorite path, they'd be delighted. He envisioned sycamore, river birch, hackberry, mimosa, and green ash for the trees; spice bush, elderberries, and hop tree for shrubbery; willow grass and river oats for ground cover; and flowers of jewel weed, green- headed coneflower, and green dragon. He loved believing the sisters would look forward to the future growth of the new plantings and stretch themselves to keep going so they could make elderberry jam when the bushy shrubs matured.

     But as much as Jake willed himself to stay focused on his projects, his heart kept returning to its favorite subject. Hoping to free himself of the emotions that claimed him all morning while he staked out the ponds, the stream, and the walkway, he picked up his journal and began to write.

Saturday, June 17th, noon

Morgan. Morgan, Morgan, Morgan. I should tell you.
But I know what you'd do and I hate it.
You'd say I should find someone else to love, someone my own age.
You'd say you love Adam — though any fool can see he doesn't deserve you.
You'd say you're flattered, and you love and trust me as much as anyone in this world.
But, you would say, the rest is impossible.

I say, nothing is impossible.
We've stood by each other for years. Who better to love?
For as long as I can remember, your sensitivity has been my cushion. It's in how you treat the life around you.
With your children, you provided support from underneath, the way a whale does when she nudges her calf to its first breath. You placed what they needed within reach, yet far enough away to require a stretch. So they felt supported and loved, yet independent.

I wanted a mother like you.

But I never wanted you to be my mother.

Even then, the soft curve of your hips would stir feelings in me that had nothing to do with a child's longings.
How many times have I ached to feel the weight of your breasts in my hands, to touch the rhythm of your heart beneath their softness? To caress the back of your neck with my lips, to press my tongue into the hollows at the base of your throat, to quietly coax you to want me, to finally feel myself inside all that intensity?

All I want is to hold your face in my two hands and tell you I love you.

End of Chapter One