Dark Matter

by Sheree R. Thomas

  WaLiLa curses herself for allowing the ceremony to distract her from collecting flowers. Her message-center checks the level of fuel in her reserves. It is dangerously low. When her fuel banks are empty, she can no longer transform human air into a breathable substance. No breath, no life. One of the ancestors’ admonitions rushes into her consciousness like a clap of thunder. WaLiLa, she imagines them motioning, you never follow the rules. Upon arrival to earth, her first order of business is fuel-collecting. But most times motion is not married to my arrival. I come alone, in quiet night. This time I plunged into a dark sea. A dark sea not empty but full of beings. And they gathered tightly around me. And I swam with them. And now I am in need of fuel. She pushes three fingers against her lips as she wonders how she could have forgotten.

  She slumps into a body sigh. Her message-center announces that she has five hours of fuel remaining. Intending to separate from Elisa and her sons, locate fuel, and return rejuvenated, WaLiLa peers into the dark house to determine if her absence will be missed. Inside, nothing is left standing. Every particle of Elisa’s home betrayed her. Each of her possessions turned their backs on her ownership, willfully destroying form and usefulness to welcome fire’s full embrace.

  Surrounded by the ravages of her life, an uneasiness settles in Elisa’s bones. She turns her back on the wreckage and clasps her fat hands on top of her throbbing head. She walks down the hall and sees the silhouette of WaLiLa’s body swaying in the doorway. She smiles bitterly at the irony of a houseguest and no home. She steps to the doorway and stops when her body is a few breaths away from WaLiLa’s. The two bodies mirror each other. With the sunlight radiating behind her, WaLiLa stares into Elisa’s eyes. With the shadows of the house swirling behind her, Elisa stares back and sees herself mirrored in WaLiLa’s clear dark eyes.

  “Have you ever had a fire?” Elisa asks WaLiLa.

  WaLiLa shakes her head no. Hot fingers of light do not exist on her planet. Here on earth she has been fascinated by the little fires that heat human fuel and light dark spaces, but they are nothing like the fire she experienced last night. Smoke, too, is a stranger to her systems. It creeps into the being-center and fans out through the body, triggering specific malfunctions of thought and action.

  “I can’t…” Elisa starts to speak. She looks up at the sky with a wrinkled brow, then she quickly fixes her glance on WaLiLa. “I can’t continue. Would you go in and see if there’s anything salvageable in there?”

  WaLiLa’s belly shoots arrows of warning through her body while her message-center reminds her that Elisa is her access to Pedro. Her message-center also reviews the Human Decency Laws. The laws of human decency dictate that by accepting Elisa’s offer of shelter, she has placed herself in Elisa’s debt. Human codes state that WaLiLa owes Elisa gratitude in the form of courtesy or kindness. If she refuses Elisa’s request, she may jeopardize her good standing with Elisa, thereby complicating her access to Pedro.

  Against her belly’s urgings, she agrees to enter the house. She turns her body west and clears a passageway for Elisa to squeeze out of the house’s narrow doorframe. She enters the doorway and turns to look into Elisa’s eyes. Elisa doesn’t see the indecision jumping from feature to feature on WaLiLa’s face. She thanks her. WaLiLa shrugs her shoulders, turns, and steps deeper into the house.

  As she walks farther and farther away from the sunlight, she rotates her shoulders back and forth. Each of the two-shoulder movements is a small prayer engaged to shake off the doom she feels pressing against her scalp. Her exploration of rooms and hallways yields nothing but unrecognizable pieces of black. The damage here is complete.

  Minutes later, WaLiLa moves to the last room, which sits in the back of the house. It is protected by a door that is closed against her. She turns the doorknob and coaxes the door forward. It opens with surprising ease. Two terrified mice scurry out of the room. They breathlessly race over her feet and disappear into the ruins of the house. She pushes the door even farther and a bird flies out in uncertain swooping patterns. The bird quickly adopts bold wing strokes that scream permanent escape. As she pushes the door to a forty-five-degree angle, roaches of every size, color, and description come streaming out of the room over and around her feet. Her hands spread in surprise.

  After the roach exodus is complete, she pauses, waiting for more creatures to exit the room. When none do, she enters the room. The room’s cool air rolls over her and silently sinks into her body. She immediately senses that this is Elisa’s room. Not her bedroom, but her prayer room. Above, a low white ceiling hangs solid and certain. The walls are plastered with scraps of paper filled with marks WaLiLa knows to be a physical manifestation of human speak.

  She stoops to the ground. Leaning forward on her hands, she looks around. The floor is covered with knee-high mountains of things. Each mountain is a strange collection of items organized by a theme unknown to WaLiLa. The little mountain directly in front of her consists of a jar of honey, an orange silk butterfly, a necklace of yellow flowers, old gold coins, and a pile of five oranges. The pile to her right has blue ribbons, three crystal glasses of water, silver rings, a doll in a frilly blue dress, a miniature ship with many sails, and a lace doily. The room bursts with ceramics, keepsakes, fruit, flowers, flour, water, wine, money, metal, nuts, coins, beads, shells, silk.

  WaLiLa leans back on her haunches slowly as her vision-centers busily take in all the items that surround her. She focuses on a photograph of a smiling, young-looking Elisa holding hands with a beaming, sienna-colored man. Written on the back is, “La Habana, 1973.” Next to it, under a crystal glass of water, rests another photograph of the same man. He stands knee-deep in the sea; his left hand rests on the corner of a handmade raft, the right one is lifted in a melancholy salute. He is crying. Written on the back is, “Para Miami, May 1985.” Behind the glass of water, a small bundle wrapped in white silk waits. WaLiLa picks it up and hears the soft clink of metal. She gently unwraps it and discovers two wedding bands. Inscribed inside the rings is the phrase, “Elisa y Gigaldo, a para siempre.”

  WaLiLa reties the bundle and returns it to its previous position. She stands and carefully steps to the center of the cluttered room. She takes a deep breath and her hands begin to tremble. Embedded in the air is the unmistakable scent of fuel. She is suddenly conscious of the energy pulsating through every item in the room. Not a flower has been singed, nor a fruit shriveled. She looks around her and sees many fresh flowers adorning the little mountains. In her eagerness to correct her previous failure to gather fuel, she decides to collect enough flowers to fuel her for days. One petal from each pile, her message-center calculates, will keep you fueled for the remainder of this trip. Careful not to disturb any objects, she tiptoes around the piles, quickly plucking one petal from each altar with nimble fingers. Considering nothing but her system’s needs, she shoves them into the rapidly bulging pocket of her dress.

  When her collecting is done, WaLiLa stills herself and listens briefly to the noises in the rest of the house. She hears the muffled sound of things softly being moved around. Certain of her solitude, she lifts the hem of her dress and tucks it into the dress’s neckline. She presses two rose petals against the center of her torso and closes her eyes as her body accepts the fuel. Her practiced fingers feel no difference between these flower petals and other flower petals that have fueled her multiple earth journeys. Neither her fingers nor her message-center consider that these petals stubbornly survived the threat of fire only by filling themselves with smoke.

  Freshly fueled, WaLiLa exits the altar room, runs down the hall, and bounds into the courtyard like a sun ray. Elisa raises her head to see a mischievous smile on WaLiLa’s face. WaLiLa stands before Elisa with an outstretched hand. Elisa wearily accepts the hand and together they enter the house. WaLiLa’s light steps lead Elisa’s heavy ones down the hall, to the altar room. Elisa looks at WaLiLa with raised eyebrows. WaLiLa nods her head in assurance. Elisa fills her chest with air and bravely enters. F
irst, a surprised peep escapes her lips, then exalting laughter. Whooping and yelling soon follow. Pedro and Modesto come running at the sound of their mother’s joy. Elisa’s palms open and rushed prayers fly through the air. Then arms, Elisa’s arms, pull her sons against her body and crushes their hearts to hers.

  4.

  WaLiLa sits at a round table nestled under the stairs with a belly full of mango batida and egg sandwich. The table, the stairs, and the apartment belong to Liliana, Elisa’s sister-in-law. On the night of the fire, Liliana guided the disenchanted family to her home. She filled them with hot chocolate, wrapped them in sheets, and insisted that they sleep. Elisa sits at the table across from WaLiLa. She stares vacantly at the wall. After the fire, Elisa locked herself into a silent state of mourning. She eats when Liliana places food in front of her. She bathes when Liliana fills a bath bucket for her. She only leaves the house when Liliana insists. Prayer is the only activity Elisa does unasked. The majority of her hours are spent staring into space, entertaining visions her mind creates and thoughts no one else has access to.

  “Buenas!” Elisa’s former neighbor Silvia enters the open doorway, ushering in the morning breeze. Her soft, yucca-colored body is thinly covered with sweat. She sits down uninvited and asks for a cup of coffee. She runs one hand through her short curly hair, while she holds up a tattered envelope with the other.

  “M’ija, this arrived for you yesterday afternoon. Papo brought it. His cousin had a visitor from Spain who carried it in their suitcase.” Silvia places the envelope onto Elisa’s lap with ritualistic flair and breaks into a self-mocking laugh. “Que triste!” she continues. “How sad it is that the mail travels more than we do.”

  As Silvia presses her puckered lips against the rim of the coffee cup, Elisa opens the letter. As she reads, Silvia sighs and launches into an extended lament of exhaustion. Her bicycle is broken, she had to borrow her son’s, it is so hard to use a bicycle for transportation, maybe not for the children because they never had a vehicle, but wow, how she misses the old family car, and oh, what a hard life.

  “What is it, m’ija?” Silvia interrupts her tirade to ask of Elisa’s contorted face.

  “My mother-in-law, she’s ill. She needs me in Spain.”

  Liliana grabs the letter from Elisa’s hand and peers at her mother’s shaky scrawls. By the time she reaches the end of the letter, she is quietly crying.

  “She didn’t want us to know,” Liliana says to no one in particular.

  Elisa stands and rests her arm around Liliana’s shoulders.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll go get Mami, and I’ll bring her home.”

  A departure from Cuba’s arms is the last thing Elisa desires, especially now that she must rebuild her home, but she has no choice. Liliana couldn’t get out of the country in a million years. Neither could any of Liliana’s brothers and sisters. Elisa, with her income, status, and connections as a godmother of Santeria, is the only one who can fly to her mother-in-law’s aid.

  “Aiiii, mi niña,” Silvia complains, “if we were in any other country! Your poor mother may die before you get a ticket in this maldito country.”

  Elisa rubs her forehead with weary fingers. First the fire, now this.

  “Don’t worry, chica,” Silvia continues. “I have a cousin in the visa department. My eldest will take care of the house, and I will go around to the offices with you every day until we get the papers you need.”

  “I appreciate it, vieja,” Elisa sighs. “Liliana, you go talk to Señor Alberto, Señora Franco, and buela. Tell them Mami is sick and you need the money Papi left with them. Silvia, we might as well start now, it’s early still.”

  “Sí,” agrees Silvia. Elisa goes upstairs and collects her purse. Before she leaves, she wakes her sons and murmurs the new surprise that has affected their lives.

  “I have sent Liliana to the country to get money from our relatives. I will be too busy to look after our guest. I want you to watch over her, mis hijos. Make sure she has everything she needs. And…” Elisa adds to the list of commands, “ask no questions of her.”

  5.

  The minute Elisa, Silvia, and Liliana walk out of the door, WaLiLa feels relentless questions whirl around her. These questions do not pass through Modesto’s and Pedro’s lips. Fulfilling their mother’s request, they maintain a painful silence. Throughout the days, questions drop from their suspicious glances and take root in the air, like seeds in fertile soil. Unasked, the questions blossom and grow. As afternoons pass, the questions learn to walk. They wander around the house following WaLiLa with their eyes. Soon they sit across from her at the lunch table, peering at her every movement. Eventually, WaLiLa’s resistance is broken down. She bursts.

  “I live from a town small near to Toronto under Canada. I travel and study. I collect information of people, places, things. I watch and listen, then I bring stories to people mine. People mine do not much travel and they want to know what the world is. Your mother is nice to take me. After fire, I tell her I go other place but she insists I stay here. If I am problem, tell me this. I go.”

  “No!” growls Pedro. “Unless my mother says otherwise, you will go nowhere. As long as you are in Cuba, you stay in this house. Understand?”

  WaLiLa shakes her head in agreement, keeping an eye on the questions. They still sit across from her, but they are shrinking. Now their eyes barely reach the rim of the tabletop.

  “There is much to study here,” says Modesto. “We have a long and rich history, why don’t you take a tour?”

  WaLiLa’s message-center processes this question as a challenge rather than a suggestion. She feels a tightening in her torso. The nuance of accusation she hears in his voice discomforts her. Is this what it feels like, she wonders, to be hunted? She slowly winds her arms around her belly. The smoke from the fuel she liberated from Elisa’s prayer room causes unidentifiable pain as it ventures out from her being-center toward her message-center. With her hunter’s acumen diminished by smoke’s stealthy sabotage, she is unable to pursue the source of the brothers’ suspicions about her. She has one intention: to connect Pedro to the ancestors. To do this, she must reach his eyes. She turns her face toward him and says, “Tell about history long and rich. I feel pain, many pain here.”

  Pedro lights a cigarette and glances up at the ceiling. As he exhales a breath of smoke with a sigh, WaLiLa slowly stands and walks to the kitchen window. She casually pulls a rose from a bouquet that sits on the windowsill. She pushes the rose against her nostrils and returns to her seat, maintaining surveillance on the thin curls of smoke leaving Pedro’s parted mouth and burning cigarette. The smoke does not reach her, but she keeps the rose pressed to her face anyway. Should any stray smoke molecule float near her, the flower petals will filter the air and block the smoke before it has the opportunity to enter her body.

  “The pain you sense here is very specific to this time period. We have always lived with pain. Sometimes very little, sometimes a great amount. Today my people are living at the limit of human dignity. We are struggling to maintain some semblance of life, but it is…” Pedro pauses, his grapple with translating his thoughts into words visible on his face.

  “When we lost the Soviet Union, we lost a lot. Without their support, we are isolated and alone in the world. It’s a strange thing, really,” Pedro mutters as he squints at the wall as if looking at something in the distance. “We are isolated and alone, yet the entire world watches us and regards us with curiosity and suspicion. You came out of curiosity, I assume?”

  Pedro turns his head and glances at WaLiLa briefly, then immediately turns away when she nods her head in agreement.

  “Oh, especially the Americans, they salivate waiting for us to fall so they can pounce on us. Castro will never let that happen.…”

  WaLiLa focuses on the bitterness in Pedro’s voice. She tunes out his speaking, wishing she could gain some assurance from the ancestors. Her muscles strain, begging to communicate with them. Can
they want nectar from such a bitter fruit? Her thoughts are interrupted by a loud crash. She realizes Pedro is no longer talking and her wrist is stinging. Both he and Modesto are staring at her.

  “Why you look me?” she asks.

  “Do you know what you just did?” Pedro asks.

  “No.”

  “You knocked everything off that shelf above your head.”

  She looks up and sees a small plank of painted wood tilted off its wall supports. She looks down and sees the floor littered with overturned spice jars.

  “Oh, my muscles jumps, must came back.” How could the arm flick have returned? She scrambles for words to explain, as her message-center simultaneously races to explain it to herself.

  “I have muscles jumps. I leave medicine home, so they return.”

  WaLiLa mumbles this as she kneels to pick up the spilled spices. Modesto also kneels. As his knees knock against hers, she looks up and their eyes lock. Barriers open and Modesto dives into the infinite space he sees in her eyes. He begins disrobing his soul. I hate it here, his soul cries. It is too painful to stay. Breathing the air here is like tapping a raw nerve. He speaks of a child conceived with a Spanish tourist. He speaks of joining her and their son in Spain. He describes the pain of having nothing, doing nothing; of endless days of smoke, smoke, smoking. He admits to staying home so as not to see the prostitutes selling their bodies to foreigners for a taste of fancy clothes or money to feed their families. He details the days he sits alone holding himself, for he has nothing substantial to offer a hungry young woman in communist Cuba.

  Pedro’s fingers wind themselves around Modesto’s collarbones and dig into his flesh. The pain forces Modesto to blink. The connection broken, Modesto looks up at his brother with a wet face.

  “Que haces?” Pedro yells. “What the hell are you doing?” Pedro pulls Modesto to his feet and separates him from WaLiLa. His eyes are full of fire. In them, WaLiLa sees fear and a stubbornness that screams, You will not conquer me.