When The Shadows Began To Dance

by Yamaya Cruz

  “You know who I am?” she asked, turning her head.

  “Yes, I know all of you. I dreamed about you,” I said staring at her profile.

  She turned around and faced me.

  “Do you think that you’re dreaming now?” she asked.

  I looked at her and realized that I didn’t know. I could no longer tell what was a dream and what was real. I just looked at her puzzled. She read my expression and giggled.

  “Off course you’re confused,” she said.

  You haven’t allowed your egguns to guide you.” She continued.

  “Egguns?”

  She walked closer to me and the scent of jasmine got stronger. “Oshún is the Orisha that presides over the rivers. Only, the rivers are symbolic of your blood line, your lineage,” she said while dancing. She appeared to be floating. I was amazed at how graceful she was; her movements flowed like water running through a stream.

  “Each blood lineage leads back to a collective pool of consciousness, like a river connecting to the sea,” she continued as she walked around me.

  “When you don’t know your lineage, you can’t tap into its power,” she whispered.

  She touched my face and I melted. Her fingers were so soft. I closed my eyes as she began to caress my cheek and forehead.

  “A single drop of water is powerless, it is only when it connects to the sea, to the source is when it becomes powerful,” she said inching closer to my face. Her breath smelled of peppermint. I opened my eyes, and we locked gazes.

  “Oshún is the Orisha of unconditional love, she will help you to plug into the pool of consciousness, to feel yourself up with love, so you can heal,” she said while pulling loose strands of hair off of my forehead.

  “But first, you need to trust your egguns. They will guide you,” she said while cupping my face. I just shook my head. She stepped away and smiled. Her dancers came back and twirled around her like ballerinas, waving their scarves in the air. They then wrapped their scarves around her. She rolled around gracefully, like a moth, allowing herself to be cocooned by the garments. She just stood and looked at me, wrapped in beautiful fabric. The dancers covered her face last. They circled around her once again and then pulled the scarves off her. They pulled away, and she was gone.

  I just stood there, wide eyed. And then it hit me. It all started with just a voice, a low whisper.

  “Your soul remembers, your Ori remembers,” it said.

  I looked around me, aghast. I wondered where the voice had come from. Then I heard it again.

  “You have to clean yourself. Free yourself from bad spirits.” The voice was louder, crisper, clearer than my own thoughts.

  “Don’t resist, your body knows what to do. Your soul remembers.”

  There was an explosion of fireworks inside of my chest. My body jerked from sudden bursts of energy. My arms started to swing from side to side and my legs moved in awkward positions. I began to swing my head around like a drunken rock star playing an air guitar. I normally wore my hair in a high ponytail. It imploded around my face. I took off running around the room, jumping into the air and doing pirouettes. The beats of the drums were like surges of energy that ignited my spirit; launching my soul into another world.

  I kept running. I focused on a giant beam of light. I ran toward it full speed. The beam suddenly came alive, and I could see its face, its arms, its torso and neck. I smacked into it like a linebacker and was knocked down to the floor by its recourse. My brain rattled in my head. I looked up and could barely make out the features of the man. He kneeled down, and I could see eyes that were so dark they were almost black and clear as a midnight stream. It was Chobo, only now he had smooth chocolate skin with a wooly white beard and mustache.

  He had two white sheets wrapped around him that looked like a tunic and cloak. He was holding something in his hand. I struggled to stand up as he thrashed me with is whisk tail. Something inside me told me that I was supposed to feel pain. But I didn’t. Instead, a wave of pleasure surged through my body. My nerve endings tingled like chimes whistling in the wind.

  “I am Obatalá, and I am responsible for darkness and light. I am here to make your spirit pure,” he said while pointing a large black finger at me.

  “Your bloodline has been tainted because you have failed to cleanse negative energy,” he said while placing his hand on his hips with the whisk tail dangling from his waist.

  “When negative ashé is not cleared, it reincarnates over and over again, infecting generations after generations,” he said.

  “It’s a curse. The lineage curse that you were talking about,” I said.

  “You have to go to the heaven that’s inside of you where negative forces don’t live,” he continued.

  “How do I do that?” I asked, sitting up.

  There was a bright light emanating from him. I squinted. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could get any words out, I was knocked back to the ground by a mysterious force. I looked around; I was no longer in a basement. Instead, I was being dragged through the jungle by a tribe of indigenous people. They were almost nude, with small sheaths of fabric covering their genitals. The women were topless, with their arms, neck and face painted in assorted colors. They had thick wooly black hair that fell down their back and sun bronzed skin. Their ankles and wrist were adorned with gold bracelets, and they wore necklaces made of cowrie shells. The men’s hair was shaved on both sides with tattoos of red and white painted on the bare skin. They carried large staffs and continued to walk, humming to themselves. I could hear the drums off in the distance.

  The soil was black and soft with sporadic patches of bamboo grass. There were huge bundles of flat sedge, dragon trees and giant sized plants with elephant leaves. Exotic birds chirped, monkeys hung from trees and snakes hissed at me as I was dragged through sludge. I could hear the roaring from the waterfall from a mile away. The air was thick and misty. They dragged me to the edge of the cliff. My heart froze, I was entrenched with a mixture of awe and fear as I gazed at the water, pouring over the edge of the earth and pounding into a deep abyss.

  They removed my clothes. I didn’t struggle. Instead, I looked down at my body that was scraped, bruised, and dirty from being dragged in the sludge. I shivered from a mixture of fear and shame. One of the little girls looked at me. It was my momma. She had come back to me as a child, pure and innocent. Without moving her lips she told me that I didn’t need to feel scared or ashamed. I laid back and surrendered as the tribe began to clean my body in the river. The water washed away the mud. It healed my bruises and took away my pain. The little girl leaned over and looked me in the eye. She began to cup water in her hands and pour it onto my face and hair. I winced, not from pain but from the feeling of love.

  “Orúnmila is here,” my mother whispered. Her voice was low and timid.

  “He is second, only to God and he knows the truth of all human beings.” She continued smiling.

  I looked around me and realized that my body was totally immersed in the water.

  “He traveled to ancient land of Kemet and back to the city of Oyo and preached to people about returning to their divine nature,” she said.

  My face was surrounded by water. I lifted my head up and struggled to breathe as waves from the river sought to invade my nose and mouth. I had a difficult time hearing my mother speak.

  “Once you’ve reached you inner heaven, you can heal yourself and others. You can clean our bloodline,” she said with her voice trailing off, shaken by the beseeching wind. She held on to me tight and said.

  “That is the secret to our survival.” “Momma, I love you,” I said.

  “Orúnmila is here now, let him guide you,” she said while releasing her grip.

  I floated away like a log in water. I held my breath as the velocity of the waves pushed me off the edge. I fell; violent winds caused my body to shake like a plane experiencing turbulent winds. I shut my eyes tight and held my arms out to cover my face as I plunged into th
e belly of the river. My hair feathered around me like paint from a brush stroke. I struggled to breath out of my nose and mouth, leaving behind an underwater trail of bubbles. I puffed my cheeks out like a blowfish as I struggled to swim back up to the top, but the force from the waterfall was too strong. It kept pulling me back down.

  I degraded to the bottom of the water. I felt my heart. It was beating much slower. I wondered how long it would take before it gave out on me and I died. I rested my head on a bed of seaweed, looked to my right and shrieked when I spotted a human skeleton sitting on top of a mountain of dirt. Horrified, I struggled to move away. In my attempts to flee, I kicked over a stone and another skeleton head popped up and began to rise like a balloon filled with helium. One by one, they seemed to awaken, kicking the dirt off their bodies like heavy blankets. Their chains rattled, even under water, and their manacles were rusted and lose around their bony frames.

  One of them swam over and wrapped his chain around me. I fought against it, but stopped when I realized that he was pulling me up. My heart started to beat faster. I looked up at spots of sunrays that begin to shine through the water. I hung on tight to the skeleton and rode him up to the top like a dolphin. He released me, and I floated in the shallow water like a raft. I looked around. There had to be millions of them. Their eyes were sunken and hollow as they swam around me, weeping their horrific cries. How long had they been buried? How much pain had they suffered?

  Suddenly, it all made sense. There were six Orishas. I paused for a second and then realized that I was the seventh. The forces of nature were all inside of me. I had the ability to create my own life, to heal myself, to end my suffering, to clean my bloodline. I could do this by channeling the energy of the Orishas. They could guide me through the different stages of development, until I reached the very top, which was the heaven that was inside of me. Oh my goodness. My Ori was the heaven that was inside of me.

  Yes. Yes. It was all beginning to make sense now. If I was consumed by darkness, I could never beat the shadows. I could never find the light. I looked up and saw the peaks of mountains with snow-white tips. I could see the waterfalls streaming down and sparkling like diamonds. The water roared as it toiled over large rocks and weathering sandstones. I gasped as I looked at the sky. It was one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen. It was a serious of opaque colors, with contrasting hues and dark undertones. The colors exploded throughout the sky like an aerial succession of fireworks. It took my breath away. Then there was just a white beam of light.

  “Nelly, are you there? Can you hear me?” a voice yelled from far away.

  I lifted my head off of the floor and stared at the orderlies. The room was spinning, round, and round, and round.

  “You fell and hit your head pretty hard. We’re taking you to the intensive care unit,” Dr. Ontarian said.

  I tried to open my mouth to speak, to say something, but the words came out jumbled.

  “Don’t try and talk. Just hang in there,” one of the orderlies instructed.

  “Nelly? Nelly? Nelly?” Are you still with us?” he asked. I just closed my eyes.

  The back door swung open, and I nearly fell out of the car. Nico forced me up to my feet. I looked past him and focused in on the sky. The sun was beaming. Its rays were strong and stung my eyes. He shoved me forward. It took me a while to regain my composure. Everything around me looked so familiar but foreign, as if I was living my life as someone else. My arms were pinned behind me. Nico had them bound like shackles. I stumbled on the very first step. I looked up to see Blazen peering down at me from the top landing. She was leaning against the rail, with one hand on her hip and a cigarette dangling from her lip. I struggled to walk and felt like Jesus carrying a cross. I continued up the stairs, believing that when I reached the top, Blazen was going to stab in me in the stomach, rip my heart out and send me tumbling back down. Nico placed me in front of her.

  She leaned in close to me. I could smell her perfume. Her once perfectly shaped nose was crooked; her lips were cracked and stained with dried blood. And she had a huge bruise on her left cheek. I didn’t lower my gaze. She looked offended. I winced as her fist slammed into my face. Nico laughed.

  “Okay mija, that’s enough for now,” he said.

  My back molars wobbled like a door on lose hinges. My mouth was warm with blood. I looked her in the eyes. I was different now. I wasn’t scared and she knew it. She took a couple of steps back and stomped out her cigarette with her right foot.

  “There’s more where that came from,” she said pretending to be more confident than she was.

  Nico pushed me forward and continued to lead me up the stairs and into Maria’s home. There were more people in the living room, hording in the darkness like roaches. Nico turned on the light and they all scattered about. I felt like a prisoner marching toward internment. The people in the house stared at me with long faces, taut jaws, and expressions of detestation like Hitler’s army of SS Guards. Nico released me, and I fell forward. The people around me laughed like wild hyenas. I struggled to stand back up. I needed to be strong. Nico forced me down to the ground. He yanked my shirt off. My bra straps fell over my shoulders, nearly exposing my breasts. He grabbed the back of my head and leaned me forward like a witch about to be beheaded.

  “You think you’re bad don’t you?” he sneered. I didn’t answer. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with!” he spat as he released his grip and walked over to the other side of the room.

  “I’m fucking with a coward who’s more afraid of the shadows than anybody,” I quipped.

  “What?” Nico asked turning toward me.

  “You tell people that you can help them, but all you do is exploit them. You instill them with fear and guilt, you make them feel powerless, so they can be dependent on you. You know that you’re full of shit and more fucked up than any of the people that come to you for help!” I screamed while struggling to get up to my feet. Nico just stood there and stared at me speechless.

  “He’s cursed us,” I said while turning around in circles and yelling into the crowd like a rebel instigating a revolt.

  “He fucks with our heads. He controls us with fear and forces us to bury the shadows deep inside of us, instead of facing them,” I continued. Nico walked over and tried to grab me by the throat. I pulled away and screamed out into the crowd.

  “His brujeria is like fucking poison. It pollutes our thoughts. It spreads like an infection, killing us off like a plague. And we pass it on from one generation to next,” I said.

  Nico walked over and stuffed a piece of dirty cloth into my mouth and sealed it shut with duck tape. My mouth filled with saliva, and I started to gag. The dirty garment worked like a sponge, soaking up my vomit. I couldn’t swallow. The aftertaste caused me to grimace, and the residue sat in my mouth like oil in water. I felt like I had drunk a whole gallon of milk that had curdled in my stomach. My body was wet with sweat. I fell down. I was too weak to struggle so I lay on the floor, motionless, like a dead man in a coffin. Candles with flickering lights danced all around me. Nico was circling me like an insurgent king, with his shadow moving around him menacingly. “You talk too goddamn much!” he yelled.

  “You don’t know a fucking thing about what I do,” he said with spittle flying out his mouth.

  “Look around you. Look how scared everybody is. They’re about to shit in their pants. Why? Because they know that I have power!” Nico said banging his chest. I wiggled on the floor like a worm in soil.

  “I had to be tough; I had to be fucking mean to rise to top. You don’t have a clue how it felt, to be poor, to suffer, to feel powerless. Shit! I’ll kill everyone in this fucking room before I let myself feel that way again,” he spat.

  “People who come to me are clueless. They’re too stupid to realize that they create their own suffering. But shit! They’re trained to look for miracles. They want a quick fix, a magic potion or pill that’s going to make everything better. Hey, if they want to belie
ve in that shit. So be it. I’ll take their fucking money!” he yelled loudly. He looked at me and began to laugh, loud wicked cackles.

  “Hey Cabron,” he said eyeing Fatboy. “Get your fat ass over here,” he said waving him forward with his hand. He wrapped his arm around him and spoke in a loud whisper.

  “You like this girl?” he asked.

  Fatboy just looked at me.

  “She’s fresh meat, never been touched. I’ll let you have her first,” Nico said causally like I was a puppy he was trying to sell. Fatboy’s eyes lit up.

  “How about this, pick four or five of your amigos, take her in the back room and make her little ass scream for mercy,” he said.

  “Hold up Nico. That ain’t what we agreed on.” Nico looked over his shoulder and rolled his eyes as Ali stepped forward.

  “This little bitch has a big mouth. I got to teach her a lesson. Besides, since when have I been known to keep my fucking promises?” Nico said. Fatboy laughed and then licked his lips.

  “Naw Nico. I can’t let you do that. She’s my sister,” Ali said. “Oh, so now you’re a family man. You weren’t talking that shit when you strangled your own momma, or when you told me where this little puta was,” he said. Ali lowered his head in shame.

  “You’re just like your daddy, a waste of fucking egg and sperm. We used to kill faggots like you in my day,” Nico said.

  “You’re going to have to kill me then, cause I ain’t going let nobody do anything to my sister,” Ali said.

  “What? You must have lost your mind. Suddenly, you got a set of balls. Man. Get out of my face with that shit. You don’t have any family. You gave it all up when you decided to work for me,” Nico said.