“If Boy Bishop doesn’t return soon, this maniacal and paranoid black is going to take over,” said another of Boy Bishop’s followers.
“I plan to phone him tonight. If he doesn’t get back here soon, there’s going to be bloodshed,” said Brother James. Sister Barbara pouted and then gave Black Peter a fierce stare. She folded her arms. Her bald head glistened and she wore hooped, gold earrings.
“How come we have to do what you say and accept your painting? Boy Bishop should have the final sayso. I for one don’t like what you’ve done with the painting,” she said. The gathering murmured: “You ain’t no Rasta anyway. You maybe can fool these white people, but you can’t fool me.” Sister Alice sat down triumphantly.
“Bro Peter is in charge when Boy Bishop leaves. We worked out the details in secret council, and none of you is to question that.” Everybody ceased their whispering. Brother Andrew had been with Boy Bishop longer than anybody. He’d gone to school with him and had been a guest at the mansion owned by Bishop’s father, Herman Schneider, the late department store president. “Peter, perhaps the anxiety of the group would be allayed if you’d just explain some of the symbolism in that painting. I rather like it.” Sisters Barbara and Alice glared at Brother Andrew.
“His name ain’t no Peter,” said Sister Barbara, one of the whores who’d defected from Joe Baby. “He’s a crazy nigger that Boy Bishop dragged up from Forty-second Street.”
“Give him a chance,” Andrew said.
“I can tell you why I put the face of Haile Selassie in the place of Saint Nicholas. Because they are both one and the same,” said Peter.
“One and the same?” Andrew said. “I don’t follow you.”
“Look at it this way,” Peter said, climbing down from his seat and walking toward the painting. He climbed atop a chair and began pointing to his work of art.
“Now, see, here is the Emperor who rode on a white horse the same as Nicholas and the same as Marcus Garvey, who predicted that the Emperor was coming.”
“Who was Marcus Garvey?” someone asked.
“An Obeah man from Jamaica. He was the prophet who was sent by Jah to pave the way for the coming of the Emperor.
“Now, let me explain to you,” said Black Peter, whose whale’s head contrasted with his small body. “There”—he pointed out—“you see the Emperor punish the teef just the way Nicholas did. The Emperor punish the teef Mussolini.” He pointed to Mussolini’s head in the painting. Mussolini had the body of a dog. Black Peter’s painting showed the Emperor bringing down a machete on the Italian dictator’s head.
“Nicholas fly, the ashanti fly, and here you see Selassie flying to the League of Nations where he went to protest the invasion of Ethiopia by Rome. The Emperor had his problems with Rome. As you know, the Vatican removed Nicholas from the calendar of Saints.” Some of the nuns who were loyal to Peter looked on as Peter ran down his “science,” as he called it. His “reasoning.” “Nicholas is an island patron. The patron of New York Island. The Emperor is also an island patron. The Island of Jamaica.”
“Isn’t he adorable?” said one nun.
“He’s wonderful,” said another. “If you look closely, you’ll see that he’s wearing an aura.”
“Selessie was the Emperor of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is Zion. Nicholas was once overseer of a monastery named New Zion,” Black Peter argued.
Another nun who was loyal to Boy Bishop, named Sister Suggs, glared heat at the nuns who were admiring Peter as he continued his, for Sister Suggs, “wild, incoherent, and ‘scattershot’ narrative.” She mangled her french bread and held her mouth open as she stared at Peter. When Peter finished, a hush filled the room.
“I have to hand it to you, Brother Peter. You are an excellent painter [Sister Barbara passed a note to Sister Alice and they both grinned at each other] and I agree that we must keep up with the times. I think, however, that we should wait for the return of the Boy Bishop. Tell me more about this Rastafarianism. It sounds fascinating.”
“Thank you, Brother Andrew.” Suddenly, Brother Peter hesitated. He moved his neck about as though it were the hood of a black cobra.
“Where’s Brother James and that journalist?”
AT LIFE’S LIMITS
Kiini Ibura Salaam
(2000)
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. Energy pierces her skin and plumps up her body. Particles of power lodge into her being-center, her message-center, and her vision-centers. A piercing light suddenly suffuses her cocoon with a bright glow. 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, and then, 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 and fascinating 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 the 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. The tunnel narrows as she flexes and stretches every muscle she possibly can. Instinctively, she pushes her arms against her sides and points her toes to streamline her body.
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 and immediately feels gentle nudges pressing against all sides of her being. A sea of swaying torsos, reverent palms, and open-throated song surrounds her. She has become the nucleus of a pulsating mass of people. The cloaks of closed eyes seal them into their own individual worlds. Their spiritual trance offers WaLiLa protection from detection; no one notices her arrival.
As sweat-soaked skin rubs against her body, WaLiLa is roused into action. She starts to push through the crowd, searching for someplace on the edge where she can analyze her surroundings. Then, with the collision of a deeply scarred palm against the cow-skin mouth of a hand-carved drum, an explosive sound breaks through the crowd. Controlling beats roll forcefully toward the people. Barbs of passion erupt in every ear the music enters. The peaceful trance is shattered.
Every face lifts and faces east. Guinée lies east. Holy Guinée. The drumming becomes feverish and the swaying crowd becomes erratic as the frenetic rhythms burst above their heads. The drumvoices soar within WaLiLa’s chest like a command from the elements. They explode in her being-center, vibrating her will like sound vibrates vocal cords. Behind her, people begin to surge forward, straining to get closer to the drummers. Her message-center reminds her to stay alert. The crowd in front of her begins to part. A narrow path is cleared and the drums rush through and grab a tight hold of her throat.
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 its precarious position on a dancing woman’s shoulder. The cloth frees itself easily. She quickly wraps it around her body and secures the makeshift covering with a knot. She turns around, searching for an exit through the crowd, but she finds none. The only path open to her is the one leading to the drummer’s realm.
As bodies continue to push her forward, 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? 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 woman in white whirls herself in swooping spirals around the clearing’s edge.
If WaLiLa wasn’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 WaLiLa’s 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 begins to gently query 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. This is a gathering of information essential to her survival. The woman’s response to WaLiLa’s inquiries is eloquent and direct. Her motions offer answers so clear, WaLiLa wonders if the woman is conscious of the communicative function of her movements.
WaLiLa discovers 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, food, and communion float beyond the reach of the common folk. The people have been losing family members with the passing of the years. Cousins, fathers, and lovers try to escape by walking into the sea, as their tar-toned ancestors had done centuries past.
WaLiLa is so deep into the conversation she barely notices the new pitch the voices have engaged. A different tune is being expressed and the woman’s motions change immediately. WaLiLa slows down her conversation. The woman opens her throat, lets out a series of shrieks, and falls to the ground. The drumming lowers to a whisper. The chanting drops to a low rumble. Three people gather around the fallen woman. They clear the charged air around her with palm fronds. An old man stops singing long enough to bark some blessings over the woman’s body and shower her with water sprayed from the fountain of his mouth. The three lift her to her feet. The chanting rises powerfully. Once on her feet, the woman opens her eyes. They shine like dark moons beneath the rim of her white head-wrap. When her eyes make direct contact with WaLiLa’s, the woman’s identity pops into WaLiLa’s vision center.
• Elisa Eguitez, 51, 201 pounds, Cuban
Then her eyes flutter closed. The dark moons are strong, decides WaLiLa. This woman will be my host.
2.
After the ceremony, Elisa walks directly to WaLiLa and asks her if she has a place to stay. WaLiLa shakes her head no.
“You can stay with me, m’ija. What I’m offerin’ ain’t too special. I only have a small place and I share it with my two sons, but…”
WaLiLa doesn’t question how Elisa knows she needs lodging. It has been some time since she last spoke this tongue. She wants to observe more before she starts stretching sounds through her lips.
In silence, she follows Elisa’s heavy, swaying flesh across a grassy field. Elisa stops at the trunk of a great big tree. She stuffs a cloth bag full of mangoes and bananas into a woven straw basket that has been rigged to the front of a rusty orange bicycle. A small rectangular plank of wood is attached behind the seat, atop the back fender. Elisa motions with a wave of her dark arm for WaLiLa to sit. WaLiLa hikes up the cloth she had hastily wrapped around her body and sits. If Elisa notices the flowers stuck to the soles of WaLiLa’s bare feet, she says nothing. With a grunt, Elisa pushes the bike pedals into forward rotation, thrusting the wheels into motion. After a couple of slow, strained rotations, the bike takes flight. WaLiLa’s body jerks back. She spreads her arms and closes her eyes as the sweet cool breeze rushes past her face.
During the bike ride, Elisa neither asks questions nor offers information. In the absence of chatter, stillness enters the air. A cotton-soft serenity envelops the bicycle. WaLiLa’s message-center is overcome with surprise. Serenity rarely visits in the presence of a human being. WaLiLa welcomes it as she recalls the stillness of floating in the cocoon of energy, surrounded by the dark matter of space.
The quiet embrace of Elisa’s silence is abruptly broken when Elisa curses softly and skids to a sudden stop. WaLiLa feels the imbalance instantly and slides to her feet. A thick crowd blocks the sidewalk and the street. Elisa pushes through the crowd with repeated permiso’s. WaLiLa follows. When they finally reach the front of the crowd, Elisa gasps. Her hands spread in shock. Freed from her grip, the bicycle tilts, then clatters to the ground.
“Changó!” Elisa whispers.
“What is?” asks WaLiLa as she feels her skin bend under sharp jabs of burning air. A ferocious being of concentrated heat leaps through the small rectangular courtyard in front of them. Its multiple fingers of light dance in the windows and on the roofs of the courtyard’s houses. The crowd is frozen in silent awe as the small rumblings of fear spiral through the air.
“Changó!” Elisa yells. The terror in her voice shoots through the air and bounces against eardrums that had been formed in her womb. Her two children rest their buckets of water on the ground and turn to scan the crowd for their mother. When they see Elisa, they come running. They dodge neighbors who are engaged in a desperate rescue effort. After crossing the courtyard, they grab a tight hold of Elisa.
“I’m sorry, Mama, the fire cannot be stopped.”
So this is the great being’s full fury, WaLiLa thinks as she instinctively backs away from the fire. She fixes her vision on the houses again and watches as the little structures weakly bow and yield before the fire’s will. I have seen tales of your destructive powers; she quickly motions to the fire before returning her focus to the humans next to her. As the boys speak to their mother in soothing tones, WaLiLa examines them.
• Modesto Alonzo, 24, 160 pounds, Cuban
• Pedro Alonzo, 38, 135 pounds, Cuban
As Pedro’s slight body fills WaLiLa’s vision-center, the “Assignment” signal blinks immediately. It is the elder, WaLiLa thinks, who must provide the nectar. She crosses her arms and studies his mannerisms as he attempts to quiet his mother’s mumbling. WaLiLa can’t discern if Elisa is mumbling curses or prayers. She turns her vision-centers back to the fiery courtyard, watching as the neighbors eventually succeed in their effort to smother the fire. Bored with toying with human emotions, the fire allows itself to be extinguished.
3.
The day after the fire, Elisa, Modesto, Pedro, and WaLiLa stand in front of the fire-buckled front door of Elisa’s house. A smoky scent hovers in the morning air. With worried fingers, WaLiLa twists the hem of the borrowed dress she is wearing. Smoke is a bad omen. Quietly, as if arming herself for battle, Elisa clutches the colorful beads that hang from her weary neck and begins to pray. Surrounded by the soft light of dawn, she begs for protection and salvation. She asks Obatala, the ancient, for his wi
sdom. Observing Elisa’s prayer, WaLiLa sees a world of difference between the tightly clenched body before her and the whirling image in white who introduced her to Cuba. If there is ever a time for bodyspeak, for exalting arms, bent knees, and passionate wrists, WaLiLa thinks, this is the time.
Elisa’s plum-black lips move mechanically, pushing out prayers without breath. The gravity of her plea is communicated by the tremble of her lower lip as the words fall into the ears of the gods. After the prayer, she inhales several deep breaths and grasps the doorknob. She pushes against the miserable, crumbled piece of wood her front door has become. It refuses to budge, loyally protecting the house against intruders. She leans her shoulder against the door. Ignoring the soot stains grinding into her clothing, she uses her heft to force the door open.
When she crosses the threshold, concrete shards hit against the toe of her shoe and slide across the floor. She sinks to her knees to examine what has collided with her foot. Her body tenses as she realizes that shattered before her is the fifteen-year-old concrete head of Ellegua, the watcher. Elisa draws in her breath sharply and wonders if Ellegua’s destruction was the result of the fire or the cause of it. She drops a small prayer of apology like a rain shower from the dark clouds of her sad lips.
Elisa stands and leads her sons into the house. WaLiLa watches as the blackness of the skeletal house swallows their bodies. She does not enter. The sun batiks patterns of heat on her bare neck as it rises in the sky. The scent of dew resting on thick flower petals slowly drips across her face. Her being-center leaps. You have not fueled since your arrival, her message-center notes.
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