Ancient, Ancient

by Kiini Ibura Salaam

  No, Cori’s buzzing was not at all like MalKai’s.

  The blood vessels in Cori’s hands were so strained he felt they would burst. He stared at his shaking palm, and his fluttering life line gave way to images of his and his cousin’s blurred bodies as his cousin chased him though his adult-empty house, of their nude bodies pressing together in his parents’ big empty bed, of their tingling bodies working together to achieve that sweet, sweet release. MalKai’s fingers crossed Cori’s fluttering life line and obliterated Cori’s memories. I did not come to earth to encourage the reminiscing of reluctant assignments, his fingers insisted.

  In this last seduction MalKai was tugging on needs Cori didn’t know existed and answering questions Cori didn’t ask. He was leading Cori down an invisible orchid-lined path, heavy with the scent of déjà vu and lust.

  Amidst the heady chain of events, Cori’s mind had become a blackboard upon which complex theorems were frantically being worked out. Spurred by velvet touches and hinging on fear, Cori nervously built the type of mathematical sentences he had learned could prove any geometric fact. “If someone sees me, then the whole world will perceive me as abnormal.” “If I do this, then everything I have done up until this day will be called into question.” “If I enjoy this interaction, then what am I?”

  The chalk snapped in Cori’s mind and left him solutionless. Math abandoned, Cori offered a shaky-fingered reply to MalKai’s advances. Their hands began to dance. First teasing palm-stroking with fingers, then fingertips rubbing against each other. MalKai’s fingers were no longer alone in their advances. Cori’s fingers ceased their trembling. Both hands mirrored the intimate joining of lovers. The undulations of their hands fascinated Cori. He sighed in wonder at how such simple movements could shake him to his core.

  MalKai’s fingers soon grew tired of palm stroking. They began to wander to Cori’s wrist, up his arm to Cori’s shoulder, and to the nape of his neck. They lingered there for a second. Long enough for MalKai to contemplate the next move…

  …and also for Cori to contemplate his. Cori wanted to believe the dancing hands were the climax of this daring adventure. Thought that hand-fucking with a total stranger was risqué enough to merit a life-long memory. He didn’t realize that the film had just started, the theme music was playing, the opening credits were rolling, and he was the leading lady. Anyone peeping from afar, watching the seduction play out as if on the silver screen, knew where Cori would be in scene two:

  Naked, fingers in mouth, chest heaving, lips moist from nervous licking, lowered eyes, staccato breath, belly trembling, body spread across bedsheets… or grass… flared nostrils.

  Cori kept replaying how he had gotten to this point. How was it that he had landed under an oak tree in the web of a velvety hand-fucker whose motions, intent on turning him out in plain view of the entire world, had him pressing through the fly of his new silk boxers. Cori’s eyes closed involuntarily when he felt MalKai’s hand on his chest. A muscle he didn’t know existed, twitched in his groin. His ears were burning with embarrassment. Could anyone see him?

  The seducer stares ahead toward the end of the road, with his head cocked at a devious angle, calculating how long it will take to get there. The seduced looks behind at the beginning of the road and, with his brow creased in concern, wonders how it slipped so far away. Cori’s entire life, it could be argued, was an attempt to avoid any event such as this one. For years, he discretely avoided eye contact with men who wore their privacy in public like an expensive coat of chinchilla. Didn’t want to rub shoulders with those who stood outside their closets, for fear of contamination. Purposely refused his hand’s desire to linger on the shoulder of an especially intriguing friend. Newspaper clips announcing trysts in the park left a bitter taste in his mouth. That he could be so caught up as to release control out in the open and let down his guard unnerved him.

  This was a propless seduction. There was no sensual wailing floating in the air, no liquid intoxicant on ice, and no satin sheets beneath Cori’s back. In fact there was nothing Cori could blame his transgression on. He was resting against the dirty bark of an old tree atop a hill covered with dying grass. Nothing short of a miracle could have brought Cori to this point—and the miracle was a touch so utterly sensual, an understanding so undeniably sexual, that it could not be ignored. Every refusal Cori had forced his body to accept in the past decade, delivered him here—a willing participant—in MalKai’s lap. Each little impulse he had previously suppressed quietly collected itself into an explosive mass, and now, two clasped palms had coaxed the explosion.

  If there were a movie camera hovering somewhere in the skies, as Cori imagined there must be at this seminal point in his life, it would close in on the oak tree that sheltered the seduction. From a great distance, it would reveal the green silhouette before swooping through twisted, leafy branches to reveal Cori and MalKai’s heated embrace at the tree’s base. The camera would then pan over MalKai’s shoulder to reveal a brown moth resting on the tree bark and close in on the moth’s wings as it fluttered by, tickling the kissers and rousing them from their soul sucking.

  The battle within Cori had been won. The mutiny was complete. Now, Cori had forgotten there had been any dissent, submitted completely to the lips that had devoured his fear, his indecision, his revulsion—and he couldn’t wait. Cori couldn’t wait to break down barriers and go where he had never gone before. To bring shame upon his family. To participate in an act he would never verbalize to anyone. To create a memory to file next to his afternoon pleasure trips with his cousin. Only this time, it could not be excused by age. Only this time, there would be no aunt to say, “Don’t worry, they’re just little boys.” There would only be condemning eyes and accusing fingers.

  And hate.

  Arms encircled and crushed solitude from Cori’s lonely body. Lips soothed, and pushed tenderness through his teeth, down his throat. Hands left a trail of shivers along his passion-warmed skin. Cori had often found peace—or at least momentary joy—crushing some woman in his embrace. But he had never been crushed. Nor had he been seduced. Cori had never been the one with thoughts of escape up until the last moment.

  Yet here he lay, under the boughs of an oak, ready to agree to anything this thick-fingered stranger suggested. A dog squeezed out a marathon of barks without stopping for breath. A painfully sweet bursting feeling split through Cori’s chest. His cells wanted to know the contours and textures of MalKai’s velvet skin, but his mind launched one last protest. He stood with his toes hanging off the brink of discovery and felt the intense desire to shuffle backward to a safer spot. His will faltered: did he really want to uncover the secrets he was coaxing out of hiding? Certainly he could live life without knowing what it’s like to be fucked under an oak tree by a velvet stranger. He took one more glance back to that point at the beginning of the road, but it was too late to turn back. This was happening now.

  Mid-seduction.

  This is the now, Cori, and those are lips inching up the back of your neck. This is the now, and you don’t know the owner of those lips, you’ve just met him under this tree. You can’t take him home to meet your family or to your apartment to help you paint your walls. You don’t even know if you will see him again.

  Ignoring his fresh whispers of doubt, Cori bravely turned his face to MalKai’s and opened himself under the caress of the breeze and the watchful eyes of the skies. It was all-consuming curiosity that made Cori unbutton the top of his shirt. It was vanity that made him think of all the women who had ever loved him. It was pride that made him consider how shocked they would be to find him here—half naked, crushed in a strange man’s embrace.

  All philosophy went out of the door when MalKai attacked Cori’s lips with a finality that shook Cori to his bones. MalKai pressed his body against Cori’s. Cori’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, and his shoulders dropped into relaxation. He boldly began a grind that signaled he had left all questions and doubts behind—or at least swallo
wed them, so that they might resurface at a less critical time.

  When Cori opened his eyes he was startled to find himself reclining on one of the wide branches of the oak tree. His eyes felt heavy like they did when sleep had a powerful hold upon him. His mind was as jumbled and confused as it was whenever he was abruptly disturbed in the middle of an intense dream. He saw what looked like large moth wings folding down into MalKai’s back. Under the intensity of the moment he could not focus on supernatural visions.

  MalKai’s lips on Cori’s open thighs were too distracting.

  The birds must have been shocked: Cori and MalKai’s bare backs writhed and undulated as the sensations traveled up and down their spines. The squirrels must have been pissed: Cori and MalKai jerked like epileptics, shaking the branch and disturbing the tree’s peace. The ancestors must have nodded knowingly. Though muscles cramped and body parts twisted, pain was not felt. Not until the dam broke and the waterfall flowed.

  One of the last visions that burned in Cori’s retina that day was the golden glow radiating from MalKai’s body. If he hadn’t just had his mind blown, Cori would have noticed that the glow was most intense where MalKai’s lips touched his skin. If he hadn’t been reclining on a branch twelve feet in the air, he might have realized that the glow was coming from him and that MalKai was drawing it out of his body. He might even have concluded that the entire love dance had been executed to render him so full and so yielding as to make MalKai’s nectar-collecting possible.

  But Cori’s feet were not firmly on the ground, and his mind was far from its clearest state. Tracing the path of an after-sex glow was not at the height of Cori’s priorities. Instead he confused the glow of his own nectar with the setting sun and squinted in its glare. Through the slits of his half-closed eyes, Cori saw MalKai throw his head back and the moth from the tree land softly on MalKai’s lips. Cori slowly reached out a shaking hand to brush it away. Then as if on cue, hundreds of moths attached themselves to MalKai’s body. Sure that his eyes were tricking him, Cori rubbed them with a sweat-soaked hand. When the moths began to flap their wings, Cori stuttered some phrase of incomprehension. The moths took off with MalKai’s body, and Cori drew in a deep breath of disbelief. Overcome, he rested his throbbing head back and closed his eyes in exhaustion.

  When Cori woke, it was night. He opened his eyes, and saw darkness; then his eyes dilated into focus, and he began to discern the cocoa brown ridges of bark. As Cori’s mind raced to orient his body to his surroundings, his eyes flitted around seeking something familiar to grab on to. His body welcomed him back into consciousness with the tingling sensations of a painful resting place; his skin greeted him with the gritty roughness of dirt. Cori sighed. His chest was tender where the bark of the tree had rubbed against it. As he turned his head upward, to the sky, his nose brushed the base of the tree and his ear separated from the earth packed around the tree’s roots. Cori sat up and supported his weight with a trembling arm.

  The moon was low that night, low and heavy. The fingers on Cori’s left hand itched to touch it. With his hand outstretched and his arm fully extended, Cori felt a memory tug at his gut. He didn’t remember MalKai, but he remembered a feeling. He thought of his mother, but the minute she appeared in his mind, so did ten other women. He could not hold his mother in his mind without simultaneously thinking of his grandmother, his best friend’s mother, and that crazy woman who sat on the corner selling religious papers. It was as if the singular had been erased from Cori’s mind. His thoughts could no longer focus on individuals; he could only focus on groups. He couldn’t remember his job, his vendettas, or his debts. He couldn’t remember his closet either. Nations of communities had set up camp in Cori’s mind, and he began to work connections and create links between them.

  He lowered his head in exhaustion. A night breeze blew past him, and his skin rose with goose bumps. He looked down and realized he was naked except for a pile of moth’s wings resting in his lap.

  Cori cursed softly.

  At Life’s Limits

  There are places human beings know nothing about. Beneath infinity’s umbrella, among the flaming gases of the stars are unimaginable beings. Cocooned and comatose, they float, silently awaiting their next assignments. WaLiLa is among them. Her body hums with a bone-drenching sense of peace. Light suddenly suffuses her cocoon with a bright glow. Her journey is activated when energy pierces her skin and lodges in her being-center, her message-center, and her vision-centers. Flashing like shooting stars, the layers of her cocoon peel back and burn slowly until disintegrated. An organic tunnel collects its walls around her. The tunnel tilts itself downward, coaxing her body into motion. Soon she is slipping down, down, down, through places humans don’t know about, into the human realm.

  1.

  Musicians, practicing an age-old tradition, scatter syncopated rhythms across the night sky. Through rapid hand movements and homemade instruments, they pay homage to fierce gods. The music tattoos the sky’s surface with patterns of prayer, patterns that transform themselves into welcome mats for beings in realms the musicians have no knowledge of. One such welcome mat beckons to WaLiLa’s tunnel. The tunnel dips and glides, then aligns itself with the musicians’ tones. Her body plummets, tumbling along the tunnel’s path as it shoots through space. Occasionally, she bumps the small of her back, her knees, or her toes against the tunnel’s pliant walls.

  When the tunnel breaks into Earth’s atmosphere, it contracts, jostling WaLiLa into consciousness. She discovers herself crouched in the travel position: arms bound tightly about her, folded legs pressed close against her chest. The tumbling is dizzying, but tolerable. She throws her head back and grimaces as she struggles against the forces of motion to uncurl her body. Fully extended, WaLiLa picks up speed. She pushes her arms against her sides and points her toes to streamline her body as the tunnel narrows around her.

  Within seconds, the tunnel recedes and deposits her into the air. Unaided, WaLiLa tumbles into the Realm of Human Being. When her toes reach the human altitude, they gently brush against a shoulder frosted with sweat. That shoulder smoothly dips down and across, making space for WaLiLa’s nude body. She slips into the opening, gentle nudges press against all sides of her being. A sea of swaying torsos, reverent palms, and open-throated song surrounds her. A pulsating mass of people—sealed into their own individual worlds behind the cloaks of closed eyes—rubs against her body. No one notices her arrival.

  WaLiLa starts to push through the crowd, searching for some place on the edge where she can analyze her surroundings. Then, with the collision of a deeply-scarred palm against a taut drum, an explosive sound breaks through the crowd. Controlling beats roll forcefully toward the people. The peaceful trance is shattered. Every face lifts and faces east. Guinée lies east. Holy Guinée.

  The drumming becomes feverish. As the frenetic rhythms burst above their heads, the crowd’s swaying becomes erratic. The drumvoices soar within WaLiLa’s chest like a command from the elements. Behind her, people begin to surge forward, straining to get closer to the drummers. Questions burn in her being-center. What land is this beneath my feet? What language is this dancing in my ears? What people are these surrounding my body? Her message-center reminds her to stay alert.

  WaLiLa advances, following the demand of the drums. A sudden breeze slaps her into sharp thinking. You shall soon be seen, her message-center communicates. She tugs a piece of white muslin from a woman’s shoulder and quickly wraps it around her body. She turns around, searching for an exit through the sweat-soaked crowd, but finds none. The people between her and the drums begin to part. A narrow path is cleared, and the drums rush through and grab a tight hold of her throat.

  Soon she is toeing the barrier around the drummer’s circle. An arc of drummers sits before the crowd. They are all of the male sex and completely oblivious to WaLiLa’s presence. Rhythm! their hands cry, Must maintain the relentless pace of the rhythm. Between the crowd and the drummers is a circular clearing. A woma
n in white whirls herself in swooping spirals around the clearing’s edge.

  If WaLiLa weren’t positive that the soil beneath her feet was Earth’s, she would mistake the woman’s motions as bodyspeak: her own language. It isn’t—she knows this as well as she knows the danger of her mission—but the woman’s dancing unfolds into so many familiar movements that her wrists, arms, and calves ache to join in conversation. She has long since trained her sporadic arm flicks into oblivion, but when the woman expands her chest into an open position and juts out her swinging breasts, WaLiLa feels so welcomed that her neck dips, her arms swoop up, and she loses her body to rhythmic swirling.

  Through bodyspeak, WaLiLa queries the woman about their surroundings. The woman’s brain tells her this is simply a dance, a dance she performs at religious ceremonies, or rather a dance that performs her when an orisha gets a powerful hold on her. WaLiLa’s message-center registers communication—an essential gathering of information. The woman’s responses to WaLiLa’s inquiries are so eloquent and clear that WaLiLa wonders if the woman is conscious of the communicative function of her movements.

  WaLiLa learns that she is on an island in the Caribbean sea. Spanish is spoken here, and Africa is remembered. There has been bondage and savage killing. Twice determined youth revolted, causing citizens to drink optimism and communism like wine. After celebrated freedom, hardship rooted itself in the island soil. Today despair is as common as clouds. The local diet is resilience. The simple pleasures of work and food float beyond the reach of the common folk. The people have been losing family members with the passing of the years. Cousins, parents, and lovers try to escape by walking into the sea, as their tar-toned ancestors had done centuries past.