Jessie is writing down her dream.
I dreamed Olivia came with her suitcase to my school. She was going to embarrass me to death in front of my friends. Dad said I had to love her but I wanted her to die. I wanted to step on her and squash her like a bug. I was afraid she’d steal all my stuff. Steal my credit cards and checkbook and billfold. I thought she’d move into my room and take up all the closets. I can’t love her no matter how I try. I think I just married King to get away from her and Dad. I hate to be in the room with the two of them together. They do such terrible things to each other with just the way they walk around the same room. They say such bad stuff to each other. He keeps asking her those questions and she keeps saying she’s going to do it but she never does. Aunt Anna did this to us. She dumped Olivia on me because she didn’t have any babies. Aunt Helen said the central fact of Aunt Anna’s life was all those miscarriages but no one who writes about her ever believes it.
Olivia is dreaming she is in a tent. She is wearing her grandmother’s wedding dress and Bobby is coming to get her pregnant. It’s raining on the fall leaves and water starts seeping in and turning the dress a dirty brown color and she is getting madder and madder and she can’t move. She is tied down. She’s tied down to an operating table and they are going to take something out of her.
She burst from her bed and ran into the kitchen and threw open the refrigerator door and got out the milk and cut three pieces of banana nut bread and stood by the counter shaking and eating her food.
Georgia is writing down her dream.
At four I waked, thinking I had made a breakthrough in understanding. I dreamed Zach and I were at camp. Everywhere I went, there he was, being a wet blanket, spoiling my natural spontaneity. The revelation is this. I’m afraid I’ll have to take on his problems. He is afraid he’ll be deserted by his momma (current Mother Figure, i.e., me). These are bonding issues. When we started talking about living together, the trouble started.
He is pathologically unable to control the twins because he has to have their approval. His dad didn’t pay much attention to him so he is always suing for approval everywhere. When he was sent off to school at age thirteen he found surrogates and found science. This explains why he likes meetings—groups of activists and cozy little meetings and love-ins and hate-ins and blanket parties and hikes. If he could only be at school forever. Well, he’s a professor so he fixed that up but I am not good at Academia. Thought I would be. Am bored with it now. Want to see some ballet.
Zach is dreaming he is lying down beneath a tractor. No, you can’t build the bomb here, he is saying. The tractor runs over him. The crowd cheers. He sinks down into the mud and is unharmed. When he rises from the mud he sees the twins by a roped-in area. They are selling his clothes to the crowd for souvenirs. I’m okay, he yells. They do not even turn their heads. Bonded in the womb, it says on the sign above their heads. Fuck you.
Bobby Tree is dreaming of his mother. He is four years old, standing by a door, waiting for her to come and pick him up. He is waiting all afternoon. The other children go out the door. Their mothers come for them and take them away. No one comes for him. After a while he is all alone beside the door and the rain begins to fall. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t get mad. He doesn’t want to make anybody mad at him.
I am only dreaming, a voice says to him, and he begins to fight his way to consciousness. If I wake up, it won’t be true, he tells himself. Wake up, Bobby. Wake up, and it will go away. Wake up, no matter how hard it is, fight your way awake. He gasps for breath. He claws the pillow. He spread-eagles out across the bed and tries to climb the hall that leads to the light of day.
Doctor Coder is dreaming about Olivia. Memory is a vibrational dance, he tells her. Your mother is haunting you. Get out of Tahlequah. That’s bullshit, Olivia answers. She is squirming around on her chair. My mother’s dead and nobody’s ever going to get me pregnant. No one’s trying to get you pregnant. Doctor Coder moves in Olivia’s direction. I want to make you well.
You want me to join the bourgeoisie, Olivia says. Good luck with that.
King’s doctor is dreaming of a clear blue lake, a mountain lake. She is in the bow of a canoe. King is paddling it. They are going to pick up Jessie. The lake is very long and smooth, not a ripple on it. They will have to paddle for a very, very long time. You are strong enough to do it, she is telling him. You are a big strong boy. You won’t fail in this. I’m here to guide you.
Can’t I have any water? King says. I’m going to have to have a drink.
You can drink this water. She leans forward. She leans toward him with this wonderful information. This isn’t salt.
I thought it would be salt, he says. I thought it was salt.
Little Sun is dreaming they are getting ready to go to war against the Sioux. The young braves think they are getting dressed for the powwow in Tulsa. They are thinking about the money they will get for the performance and what a good time they will have afterward getting drunk in bars. The elders know it is going to be a war. I think we should tell them the truth, Little Sun says. The council look at him with quiet faces. “We should tell them what’s going on.” They shake their heads no. “We should tell them,” Little Sun insists.
Chapter 44
BOBBY was waking up every morning thinking about his father. Whether Olivia was there or not, whether he woke at dawn or slept late, as soon as he came to consciousness he was thinking about his dad. “If only they’d let me call him,” he told Olivia. They were sitting on the porch swing at his house. School was over for the day and the sky was full of beautiful white clouds. The kind that make grand sunsets in the Cherokee Nation. “If I could hear his voice I wouldn’t worry so much.”
“You can’t call him?”
“They transferred him to a different jail. The only time I can get him is seven to nine on Wednesday nights. Or he calls me.”
“That’s tonight.” Olivia had been planning on getting Bobby to take her out to Baron Fork to watch the sunset.
“Yeah. Maybe I can get him tonight. The lines stay busy so I have to sort of wait around. You want to cook dinner here and stay with me?”
“No. I’ve got some stuff to do at home and I want to ride. I haven’t ridden in a week. I was thinking Kayo’d lend me a horse.”
“Sure he will. He’s crazy about you. You got him around your little finger.”
“Well, I’m going home then. You can listen for the phone.” Olivia got up from the swing and started down the steps toward the car. She stopped and turned back to Bobby. “You think about him all the time, don’t you?”
“I think he’ll go to the pen. He isn’t as strong as he used to be. I don’t know. Well, what the hell, he’s tough, isn’t he?”
“It’s too weird. A bunch of goddamn Mexicans and South Americans sending dope up here to kill everybody. It drives me crazy. I wish there was somewhere clean to be, with just land and horses and not any people around to fuck it up.”
“Starcarbon is like that. Tom and Sherrill don’t fuck anything up. Anything they touch gets better.” He stood up straighter, thinking of the mountains. Then he took her arm and led her to the car. “Come back if you want to,” he said. “I’ll be here all night.”
“I might.” She got into the car, wondering why she was suddenly so old and mean. “Maybe I will. Call me when you get done talking to your dad.” She drove off then and left him there and he was glad when she was gone. When Olivia got into a bad mood, the best thing to do was just leave her alone. She might be mad because I want to talk to Dad, he thought, then rejected the thought. No one could be angry with you for wanting to talk to your dad. Even Olivia on her worst day wouldn’t come up with that.
It was five o’clock. Bobby went into the dining room and studied for a while, getting caught up in the math, moving the numbers around until they made perfect sense. Everything fit and everything returned to everything else and each thing proved the part before and was the groundwork for what would follow.
When Bobby looked up from the papers it was ten to seven and he was starving. He took a casserole of macaroni and cheese that Mary Lily had sent over out of the refrigerator and put some on a plate with relish and brown bread and a sliced tomato. He put a placemat on the table and a napkin and a fork and sat down facing the window to the backyard. He could see the hollyhocks on the back fence and the morning glory vines that almost covered the garage. I need to drive up and see him, Bobby was thinking. If I left on a Friday afternoon and drove all night I could be there for Sunday. I could miss a Monday. Hell, I could tell the teachers where I was going.
He cut off a piece of macaroni and ate it, thinking of Mary Lily and how she spoiled him every chance she got. I hope she keeps that guy she’s going with, he decided. Hell, she deserves some happiness. Well, anybody does.
The phone was ringing. Bobby dropped the fork and ran for it.
“How’s it going, son?” his dad said. “You doing okay down there? You got everything you need?”
“I’m okay, except for worrying about you. What’s going on? You got a lawyer yet?”
“Yeah. They got me this big Iroquois named Roytame. He played football for Ohio State. He’s okay. He says he can keep me out of the pen. I think they might let me out in a week or two. I might have to stay around here for a while, but they’ll let me board around here and get a job. There’s a stable near here where Roytame keeps a horse and he talked to them about me. Said they’d heard about me. How about that? So things are going good. How’s the house holding up? You paid the rent for August?”
“Yeah. I might go to Montana when school’s out. I hope you get back before I leave. I’d drive up there if it wasn’t so far. You want me to come up there?”
“Hell, no. You stay there in school. I’m doing fine. At least it got rid of Sharrene. I’m glad she’s gone. You can take over in the love department, Bobby. I’m getting too old for that game.”
“That’ll be the day.” Bobby started laughing. “Goddamn, Daddy, goddamn, that’s funny. I never saw you without a woman.”
“You have a turn. All the time I’ve been in here, I’ve been thinking. This is okay. No one to bitch at you, no one to please, no one always asking you to do something. I’m getting good at it. Hell, I could have been a sailor. Gone to sea.”
“I’ve been worried sick about you and you’ve been up there turning against women. You ought to see these math problems I’ve been solving. It’s so clean. I lose track of time when I’m doing it.”
“You were good at that when you were a little boy. Your teachers all said it was your cup of tea. Well, listen, son, I got to get off the phone. There’s four men behind me. You take care of yourself, you hear me. I’ll call next Wednesday.”
“I hope he gets you out.”
“I think he will. I’ll let you know. Take care of yourself. Keep the oil changed in that truck. Don’t let it get low.”
“I will. I’ll check it tomorrow.” Bobby hung up and went back to the table and ate all the food he had prepared and then opened a can of sardines and ate them. It was the first time he had been really hungry in a week. He called Olivia but Mary Lily said she was still at Baron Fork.
He took the math book back to his bedroom and lay down upon his bed and fell asleep reading theorems and slept until seven the next morning. In his dreams the figures turned into geometric designs. The big Iroquois named Roytame moved in and out of the triangles and rectangles and parallelograms. Without even lifting their legs, his dad and Roytame walked side by side through a field of designs, smiling and talking, coming in his direction.
Olivia is in Doctor Coder’s office telling him about getting mad at Bobby for letting her go home so he could wait for his dad to call. “It made me so mad,” she is saying. “I just got furious with him. I was up all night thinking terrible things about him. Then when I saw him the next morning I was mean to him. I hate it when I’m mean to him. I hate myself when I’m that way. I used to be that way to Dad. To Aunt Mary Lily too. I can’t help it. It just comes over me.”
“You feel abandoned,” Doctor Coder said. It was a vein he had been mining for several weeks.
“Quit saying that.” Olivia got up and started walking around the office. “Stop saying that. I had Mary Lily and Grandmomma and Granddaddy and lots of other people. I wasn’t abandoned. Aunt Mary Lily took me the minute Momma died and she never put me down. I wasn’t an orphan. I had plenty of folks to take care of me.” Olivia moved across the room and sat down on a loveseat by a window. “Stop telling me about interrupted bonding. I’m sick of hearing it. It isn’t true. That’s not what’s wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with me. Stop saying that there is.”
“The body knows the difference between the mother and every other chemical system on the earth, Olivia. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It just means you have problems around bonding issues. And that means that when you take off your clothes and get close to another human being you have problems letting go. If someone is allowed to get that close to you and then they let you go, you get enraged at them. All you have to do is understand it and then it can’t rise up and blindside you. Don’t get mad at me. I’m on your side.”
“I was not an orphan. Dad didn’t know where I was or he would have come to get me. Aunt Mary Lily picked me up the minute I was born and never let me go. She slept with me every night. She never even let me cry.” Olivia was crying now, deep dark tears from the darkest reaches of the old hypothalamus, the oldest, darkest, most terrible part of the brain. She sat on Dr. Coder’s floor and wept for many long minutes.
It was a day for the Hand sisters to make psychiatrists uneasy. In New Orleans Jessie’s doctor was taking a chance. “I’m going to tell you what King’s dream of dying means,” she was saying. “Are you ready for this?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“In all the old myth systems of the world the dream of dying doesn’t mean death. It means the death of old ways or old beliefs. A person dies to the old ways and takes on new ways. Stops being a child and becomes a man. The myths and practices of all the major cultures use this imagery.” She stopped and watched her. Jessie was very good at picking up on things and using them. She was so serious, so intent, such an endearing young woman. Doctor Kaplan had not been wrong in thinking Jessie would be worth teaching. She sighed. She perceived herself as teaching. Teaching what she had been taught. There was nothing else. Teach, teach, teach, keep your fingers crossed.
“So he’s afraid to grow up?”
“No. He’s just dragging his feet. Maybe this is his last defense. Give him time. Maybe this is how he’s getting ready.”
“He got stoned on Saturday. But you know what he did? He called someone in AA and then he went and talked to his psychiatrist and I went with him. He said it was because Olivia called and told him to. She’s coming Friday. She’s bringing her boyfriend with her.”
“You went with him?”
“He wanted me to. Then we went home and finally the dope wore off and we went to bed. He kept making love to me but I couldn’t stop thinking about him being stoned. But it’s okay. We’ll work it out. It’s going to be all right.” Jessie looked down at her hands. Thought of the stories she’d heard about her mother flying around Europe delivering cocaine to movie stars.
“Tell me your thoughts,” the analyst said.
“It’s all too terrible . . . there’s nothing anyone can do. I never had a family, not a real one, but I keep trying to make one but it gets sabotaged. I don’t think anybody’s on my side. Crystal’s always on King’s side, no matter what happens. Manny’s not. Manny’s such an angel. I can’t figure out why he wants to spend all his time with crazy Christians. His family is so good. They never get into trouble. They all do what they’re supposed to do. Well, I guess he loves Crystal the way that I love King. Because they seem so fragile, like some old stained-glass windows so beautiful you think they will break at any moment. Like the windows in Sainte-Chappelle we saw whe
n Dad took me to France.”
“You think he’ll break?”
“No. It’s just everything seems so fragile. Everyone’s in trouble. Traceleen’s nephew, Richard, is terrorizing their whole family. I think they ought to kill drug dealers. Even if it includes my mother.” Jessie was crying now and Doctor Kaplan felt tears in her own eyes. It was true. Every word of it was true. The dinosaurs reigned for millions of years. We have only been here fifty thousand.
“I’m glad your sister’s coming,” she said. “Try to love her. Give her a chance to love you.”
“Thanks for helping me. Thank you for being here.”
“It’s what I do.” She got up from behind her desk. Another hour had passed. Stay the course, she told herself. Pray for grace.
When Jessie got home that afternoon King was waiting on the porch, playing with K.T. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go and get some gravel. I thought you wanted to make a garden underneath that juniper tree.”
“Okay,” she said, embarrassed to be so easily made happy.
“Come on, then. Hurry up. I owe you some gravel.” He smiled up at her, holding their son around his waist. She was two days late and they both knew it. “I’m two days late,” she had said at breakfast that morning.
“I know,” King had answered. “I wondered about that.”
Across town, in a little house on Athens Street, Traceleen Brown was on her knees beside her bed. “Bless Fairlie and Charles and Lula and Augustus and Blue and Terrance. Bless Miss Crystal and Crystal Anne and Manny and K.T. and Jessie and King. Bless Miss Noel and make her leg get well. If Richard comes over here, make me say what I think and not be afraid of him. Spread the love of your heart over the Desire Street project and don’t let anyone die today. Don’t let my back go out again and if it’s all right, let the lawyers work out the contract for the house. Bless Andria and make her be more humble and understanding of others’ failings and give Mandana the power to stop drinking, Lord. If King can stop taking dope there must be hope for Mandana. I don’t know about my nephew Richard. For Thy name’s sake, we pray. Amen.”
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