Godhead

by Hansen, Jalex; Alexander, Writing as Jordan

  “Isabei…come in out of the rain.”

  He looked wan and tired, but there was a light in his eyes, a silver glow just under his skin from his communion with God today. He did not ask me any questions until he had wrapped me in a quilt and fixed me a warm cup of tea. I sat by the window in a softened rattan chair and watched the rain run down the window in a single sheet. “Dante wants the Maya to come back tonight and tie the bananas down, he says there’s a hurricane up the coast and it has to be done.”

  “Why didn’t he let you use the car?”

  “He was afraid I couldn’t drive it in the rain, that it would get stuck in the mud.” Lying to him actually hurt me, the quick small burn of tearing off a scab.

  He didn’t say anything for a minute. “I’ll go ask them. You stay here.” Before I could argue or flounder my way out of the quilt he had swaddled me in, he was out the door into the storm.

  I was alone in his private space. I shook off the blanket and put down my tea. Outside the thunder pounded. I did not open his drawers, his closets or cabinets. I simply wandered the small three room dwelling feeling him, tasting the air he breathed. It was laid out in such a way that it would be easy for him to navigate in his blindness, all the furniture simple and against the walls. There were no knick knacks to knock over if one was careless. On the walls there were photographs of people I did not know, original but amateur paintings, all to please visiting sighted eyes. There was a mirror in the hallway for guests but none in his bathroom. I pictured him getting ready in front of the blank wall staring into his own mind.

  In his bedroom were the sculptures he had made were lined up on shelves, small finely wrought pieces of clay or bronze. A seashell, a manatee, a fish, hands clasped in prayer-his own. All things he had touched lined up here in private for him to feel and experience again. On the wall over his bed was the present I had given him for Christmas, the red handprint bold and somehow possessive. I was glad he could not see it.

  In the corner something was covered with a sheet. I lifted the cloth and peered underneath trying to see in the gauzy half light of the storm. On its pedestal sat the broken half-finished sculpture of the woman whose arms reached for the sky, the one I had watched him create through the window. He had finished her face. It was my own staring back at me. The blouse was open just slightly, revealing the rounded curves of breasts underneath, the hint of my body, the knowledge of its shape.

  I dropped the sheet unnerved and flustered. I knew what it meant; I just did not know what to do with the knowledge.

  His bed was made, two white-cased clean pillows pressed flat, and a woven Mayan spread. I lay down on the bed and curled up taking deep breaths of the scent of him, the smell of his shampoo and sleepy breath, and skin. I closed my eyes and plummeted into deep violet sleep.

  I woke up to a clap of thunder. It was darker now and at first the shadow frightened me. Julián was curved over the bed, leaning into the tender space of my breath. We both stayed that way, motionless and breathing until he straightened up and said in an uneven voice. “Oh good you’re awake. I didn’t want to disturb you, but the storm is getting worse.”

  I sat up feeling disoriented and also right at home. I started to apologize for the impropriety of being found in his bed, but it wasn’t necessary. I had seen under the sheet. I had seen his eyes just now, the gentle swell of his lips parting. We both knew some of each other’s secrets. I stood and smoothed the covers back trying to collect myself and giving him time to compose his face.

  “The Maya will not come,” he said. “They say this storm is bad, that it carries a sickness on it, a madness. They will stay in the village until it is over.”

  Fear dug a little pit in my belly. I did not want to go home and tell Dante. I tried to keep my breathing normal, my voice steady. “I’ll go tell him.”

  “Maybe the bananas will weather the storm,” he said. “Maybe it won’t get any worse.”

  “Maybe you can pray it away.” I did not want to sound bitter, but I was scared.

  He smiled. “Maybe I can. But I shouldn’t.”

  “I’m going now,” I told him.

  “Wait. I think you should stay here tonight. There is nothing you can do, and it isn’t safe for you out in this weather.”

  “It isn’t safe for me anywhere. I have to go.” For so many reasons. “And you know that.” I could feel the heat just bleeding into the edges of my body looking for access, the temptation to succumb, to try to win one more time.

  He nodded, swallowed. “I’ll walk you back.”

  “No.” It came out harsher than I intended. “I’ll be fine. I could borrow a raincoat though.”

  He hesitated. “Of course.” He hurried out of the room to the hall closet. I took one more glance at this cozy space, remembered the ruined house at the temple, how he had painted the picture of the man and woman there making love, raising a family. This too was a ruin for me.

  I pulled on the coat and steeled myself to go out. I was opening the door when suddenly he pulled me back, pulled me against him as though he meant to keep me there. “Isabei,” he said into my hair, his voice breaking. “Please tell me what is happening. Why are you so scared? I can feel it. I feel it when I’m there, as if he has spell on you. I pray for you every day. I pray for your soul.”

  I turned my face to his, every molecule, every atom, vibrated as I fought not to press my body into his, not to draw him in, suck him dry with my kisses, my corrupted craving soul. I looked into his face long enough to see that I could have won the wager right there in his own home on that woven bedspread next to the statue of my arms, my face, my breasts.

  I pushed him away as hard as I could. “Don’t touch me!” I shouted at his startled face, his empty arms. “Leave me alone, I don’t want you anymore!” I yanked the door open and pelted into the rain, the crash and glare of destruction, the abundance of rain that sucked at my feet and tried to drag me back.

  By the time I reached the house my heart had still not slowed down. Adrenaline ran like narcotic through my veins, making me forget myself.

  “They won’t come,” I announced stomping through the door. “You’re on your own,” I said. I kicked off my wet shoes and one of them somehow veered to the right and struck Dante on the shin leaving a muddy print on his white trousers. He was up before I could register the look on his face, a fistful of my shirt in his hand. “What do you mean?”

  “They say the storm is a bad omen, they won’t work in it,” I shouted as if he were across the room, or too stupid to understand.

  He shook me by my shirt a few times lolling my head around and then released me giving me a little shove backward.

  He leaned down and wiped at the mud on his pants, looked at the smear of it on the tips of his fingers. “Then you can get out there and do it.”

  “What? I can’t tie down a hundred acres of bananas by myself.”

  “You think you can run this place better on your own, go ahead.”

  I was beginning to regret my actions. “I told you I was sorry for implying that...look really, this isn’t something I can do. Can’t you help?” I tried to sound helpless, amenable, chagrined.

  “No I can’t” he said cruelly mimicking my voice. “Get out there and do it, time’s a wastin’, The more time you spend out there tying the bananas the less time you have to spend in here with me paying for your mistakes.”

  The storm outside did not rival the one in him, and I backed out the door into the rain again cursing him, cursing myself.

  I slogged back to the empacadora sliding in the mud, trying in the dark to avoid the deep pits that were dug for drain off. I could see them in flashes of lightening, square black graves. In the shed I caught my breath and grabbed coils of rope and bags of stakes.

  I started in the second plantings where the bananas were not so ripe they burdened the trees, I assumed those would be a loss. These were still short enough to be stronger, but near enough to harvest to be profitable soon if I could sav
e them.

  I pushed the stakes down in the ooze looking for purchase and finding none. I stabbed them in and out of the ground, scrabbling on my hands and knees trying to find some place firm. One stake went in and held, then another…and finally another. I looped the rope through the eyeholes at the top and then around the tender stalk trying not to injure it, in and out, up and back down, a crazy crochet, an inexperienced spider web. I realized I did not have a knife to cut the rope, and I made my way back to the shed and found one of the sharp separators for slicing.

  I could hear the godhead plainly now, even in the storm, it was getting louder, mocking me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw it illuminated by a flash. I wanted to ram my head down into the mud and bury myself to escape its incessant drone. I stood up and looked over the field, hundreds and hundreds of plants. The rain was driving down now in stinging wet missiles, pockety pocking on the slick ground, and making it hard for me to breathe or see.

  I started on another plant, faster now. Then another and another, my hands losing feeling from the now cold rain. The wind was picking up and I had to steady myself, leaning into the wind in order not to fall.

  His hand came over mine and took the rope out of my shaking fingers. He had to shout over the wind. “Isabei stop…this is crazy...you can’t save them!”

  “I have to!” I screamed. “I’ve already paid for them. I’ve already sold myself down the river.” I wasn’t making sense, but I couldn’t concentrate because of the strobes of lightening, and the beat of thunder, and the vortex of the wind, and above it all, the pulsating buzz of the godhead. “Make it stop!” I begged him.

  He had taken everything from me and now he held me against him.

  “How did you find me out here in the dark, in the rain?”

  “I can feel you,” he said his lips on my ear.

  He was so hot, but after the freezing rain it felt good to be warm. I pressed myself into the heat that was coming from him trying to absorb it into my body. I bore down with my lips and hands and legs, wrapped myself around the molten core he had become. I heard him suck in his breath and whimper, and then we had slipped down into the mud, and his mouth was on my face, his tongue was in my mouth and around my breasts, tasting me through the drenched material of my shirt. He pushed it away, ripping it into wet shreds, rubbing his face over my bare flesh, burrowing into me with his nose and mouth and hands. Stripped and naked, wet with sky juice, slick with saturated earth, we slid against each other. He pulled me in the buffeting winds toward the empacadora, taking me down to the ground again, and then roughly, desperately, pushed my legs apart, and in one violent thrust condemned himself and freed me.

  As he moved inside of me I could not hear the godhead, only the rain and the pumping of my heart in rhythm to his need. My liberation came silently, bending my body, erasing it of yearning and filling it instead with repletion. He gave a warrior’s cry, a beleaguered shout of desperation, the final release before the knife is driven home.

  Hushed we clung to one another, and I thought that perhaps this was the answer, that it was not a nefarious joining borne out of a curse, but a blessed and ordained thing. That God had allowed this to happen.

  The lightening cut through the clouds and seemed to linger, leaving everything highlighted and luminous for several long seconds. I heard him gasp, and then he pulled away from me falling back on his haunches, a weak and spent naked man.

  He was staring at me with something like horror.

  He was staring at me.

  He was seeing me.

  His eyes raked over my face and my spread legs, my open sweet lipped womanhood, the red and welted letter A that Dante had carved into my flesh. I curled up on my knees and reached out to him.

  He put his hands over his eyes and stood swaying, backlit by the maelstrom. He opened them again and looked out to the storm, to God’s wrath in the sky.

  And he screamed.

  Julián ran off into the night, his clothes clutched to his chest, falling and slipping and knocking into the banana plants driven blind again by his inner storm.

  I called his name over and over again, but I could not see him now. I wanted to go with him, but I could not follow, shame locked my legs and stilled my blood. I crawled halfway across the field before I could carry myself again. I could see the godhead now and I headed toward it carried by something other than shame and fear and regret, borne on a tide of bloodlust. I went up to it and looked it right in the eye and beat my fists against it until they bled, raining curses on its presence.

  “I have made my sacrifice!” I told it over and over. “Let me go.”

  When I was sure it was not humming again, I pulled myself up the stairs and into the house. It was dark, the generator had not been filled and the lights were gone. But I did not need light now. I was a creature of the darkness, a destroyer of souls.

  I walked naked and dripping into Dante’s room and crawled right on top of his bloated sleeping belly, straddling him, shaking him awake.

  “I’ve done it, you bastard.” I meant to shout but my voice was diminished by the enormity of what I had done. “I’ve won the wager.”

  He sneered at my naked, storm-whipped flesh, the empty triumph in my eyes. He knocked me to the floor. “You haven’t won yet. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

  I started to rise up, even to strike him, but he was on the floor faster than he should have been able to move, pinning me down, his hands around my throat. “Don’t you dare raise your hand to me or I will kill you,” he promised.

  “I broke him,” I told him. “I took God from him.”

  Dante's smile was carnal and merciless.

  "Body and soul,” he said. “It has to be body and soul.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  BODY

  Everyone in the village thought it was a miracle.

  Only I knew that Julián thought it was God’s punishment.

  He had been condemned to see the world as it really was, removed from all the gentle shadings and nuances that belong to the other senses. The world was a glaring visual clamor, a distraction of mud, and need, and sunshine, and general ugliness. He could not hear God anymore through all the dissonance of his eyes.

  When he hung up his collar, and told the now swollen and devoted congregation that he would not be preaching anymore, they ignored the tears in his eyes and the desperation in his voice and assured him, and themselves, that he only needed a sabbatical. He left the church with his head hung and the image of their trusting and faithful faces branded in his mind.

  The archdiocese sent someone to investigate. Julián allowed them into his house and served them tea. They asked questions about how he had lost his sight and how he had recovered it. He told them everything was between himself and God, and that they must find a replacement before his flock went astray.

  They left dissatisfied and the next week a scrubbed and balding missionary man, his wife and their four children moved into a small clapboard shack in Monkey River. They began giving Sunday sermons that as spiritual meals, only required the addition of hot water and a spoon.

  The people bore this injustice as they had borne all of their recent tragedies. They had now endured enough to make them feel chosen and so the more aggravation and difficultly heaped on their plates the more spiritual they felt. They had passed the mark of grumbling and entered sublimity and tolerance.

  The Maya did not continue at the church waiting patiently in their village for their leader to return from the dark place his newfound ability to see the light had trapped him in. They understood the fear of the sun disappearing. They understood the blindness of seeing too much.

  They did, however, return to the plantation after the storm, their obstinacy the previous day, appeared to mean nothing at all. Word traveled down to us that the hurricane had flattened Belize City and many of the plantations along the coast had suffered terribly even with helping hands.

  Nothing of mine was unscathed. A few straggly ban
ana survivors had managed to make it through. They were scattered throughout the fields among the broken bodies of the fallen, their trunks bent and split, their leaves sent whirling to snare in the cables. The cables themselves had been brought down by several of the larger plants, a rippling of dominoes, causing more destruction. The drainage ditches and irrigation furrows had washed away and the land was a ragged swamp. Here and there a tennis shoe, or a magazine, or an old hubcap sat wedged in the muck, blown in by the hurricane from some other place. Everywhere lay the fruits brought down by their own weight, their peels burst and bruised, their members scattered, the petals of newly flowering bracts pressed into the mire.

  If Dante gave me the keys to the kingdom, I would be the Queen of Desecration.

  He came down and stood among the Indians.

  “One hundred,” he repeated. “One hundred plants salvageable.”

  One for every acre he gave to the Maya.

  The air was still, the flies buzzed in the mud. The Indians were thoughtful and quiet. Dante was remote, indifferent. It meant that somewhere deep inside the beast was roaring in its cage. The godhead gave a little murmur, a come out come out wherever you are… a little pip of sound just to let me know it was still there.

  The hundred remaining plants were survivors of a holocaust, thin and desperate.

  “We’ll start over,” Dante said.

  Something cracked within my body, hope perhaps. He had no intention of letting me go. I realized that earlier this morning I had felt relief. When I stood on the veranda and looked over the destroyed fields I had thought to myself. There is nothing for him here now. He will cut his losses and leave.

  He was striding over the carpet of broken fronds, entering a new and promising city. “We’ll coax new plants from these corms. We’ll streamline ourselves, make this place efficient. We’ll look into new varieties and find the strongest ones with the biggest yield. I imagine we could even bring the rail line this far, revitalize the town.