Dark Matter

by Sheree R. Thomas

  6.

  Over the next week, the memory of Modesto’s crouched frame heaving with confessional sobs under WaLiLa’s gaze remains in Pedro’s mind. When she blows into the room, he examines the burning end of his cigarette, stares at her lips as they move, focuses on any other activity so as not to fall into those eyes. Neither witty conversation, nor sweet perfume, nor exposed shoulder can draw his eyes to wade in her vision pools. Her attempts to establish herself as a love interest have fallen like a dove struck by a well-aimed stone. Her body feels just as bloodied. Each moment of failure pushes points of pain through her skin like pushpins breaking through a voodoo doll.

  The house is quiet. Elisa and Modesto have gone to the market. Liliana is visiting relatives and Pedro has gone out with friends. WaLiLa sits on the floor at the bottom of the stairs almost paralyzed by pain. She trembles as the air squeezes her like cruel grains of quicksand. She bites the inside of her cheek and pushes herself up from the floor. She holds on to the wall and pulls her body up the stairs. She dizzily stumbles to the bed as her arm jumps, sporadically tracing arcs in the air around her.

  She lays her aching body into the folds of a rough blanket. She closes her vision-centers, hoping to rest, but her innerself rouses her from sleep by eagerly pushing against the inside of her chest. Shunning the hopeless feeling she feels washing over her body, WaLiLa taps her chest with a throbbing finger and allows her innerself to exit. Her innerself immediately brushes against her forehead in a sign of affection and respect and starts buzzing around the room. WaLiLa’s vision-centers slowly follow her innerself’s movements in wonder. After sweeping the room twice with broad wing strokes, her innerself discovers one of Pedro’s rumpled T-shirts discarded on the floor. She lands gently on the shirt, collects his scent in the wells of her body, and flies through the little window that offers ventilation to the room.

  WaLiLa, quickly losing the energy her innerself is expending, abruptly falls asleep. With the road map of Pedro’s scent in front of her, WaLiLa’s innerself goes flying through the Havana streets. Dodging the families who spill out of doorways onto sidewalks, her innerself bounces on the sounds of conversation which fill the twilight air. She flies over avenues filled with rusted vintage cars and legions of bicycles. She skids to a stop when she no longer feels Pedro’s scent. She doubles back and locates his scent two blocks away, hovering outside the first floor of a little house. Hanging in the air that presses against a cracked window, WaLiLa’s innerself notices Pedro among ten other people gathered in a small, cluttered living room. The eleven mouths share a bottle of rum while the eleven pairs of hands exchange cigarettes and finger snaps. One of the eleven leans against pillow cushions embracing a guitar. They all sing along, glowing in the space made light by their gathered hearts.

  Many laughs and music notes later, discordant sounds reverberate in the small room. The crashing of a glass against the concrete floor. The rise of angry voices, quickly followed by soft apology. Tears fall now; then a shaky-voiced reminder of tomorrow’s departure, of a raft sailing for other parts. The threat of the sea and the fear of isolation well up from the floor. The room is as quiet as held breath. Pedro is the first to answer the challenge.

  “We’ve been planning this escape for two years. I think we’ve deliberated enough. I’m done thinking. When tomorrow comes, my things will be ready and I will sail.”

  Before Pedro’s lips have stopped moving, WaLiLa’s innerself is gone. Flying at breakneck speed, she returns to the attic where WaLiLa is resting. With a crackle, she rejoins WaLiLa’s body. Immediately the knowledge of Pedro’s journey sinks into WaLiLa’s being-center. She sits up abruptly. She feels as if shards are puncturing her lower back. Her body is stiff. Her eyes dart around the room as she finally realizes her hunt has careened out of her control. Her message-center slowly reviews her body signals, noting which senses are malfunctioning and what pain is being experienced. It then considers which poisons are capable of triggering such reactions and cross-references these poisons with elements WaLiLa has actually come in contact with. She bends over as her message-center comes up with a match. “SMOKE SMOKE SMOKE” flashes in her vision-centers. She shuts her vision-centers in pain. She lies back down, her chest deflating in submission.

  Her message-center reminds her of Pedro’s departure and she sits up again. She considers the smoke first. It has been quietly damaging her systems for weeks. It is too late for repair. Then she considers Pedro. She doesn’t have time to follow him because the transport tunnel will retract in three days, leaving her stranded in the Realm of Human Being. She can’t gather the nectar from him tonight because she has failed to connect him to the ancestors. WaLiLa twists her arms back and forth as she accepts the facts; she has run out of options. She falls back against the bed again. She rolls her body from one side of the bed to the other, desperately searching for a solution. Then her body freezes as she realizes that death is already promised her. If I am to die anyway, she thinks, the possibility that Pedro’s nectar may be poisoned cannot harm me.

  WaLiLa sits up and slides her knees beneath her body. With a fluid, flicking motion from the top of her forehead into the air before her, she reports her decision to the ancestors. Oh great ones. WaLiLa raises curved, outstretched arms. The earth air is binding its poisonous cords about me. She folds her arms behind her back. This vessel that carries me is not so strong. She collapses to the right, then collapses to the left. I speak now to expose my failure. Palms outstretched, she crisscrosses her arms at the elbow four times. I cannot connect this human to you. She drops her head and shakes it vigorously from side to side. He is resistant. She snakes her torso forward. He fears me. She rocks her upper body forward and back. I have been ineffective with him. She cleaves her hands in the air, then breaks them apart suddenly. Because I refused to follow your rules. She bends forward weakly from the waist and shakes her head from side to side. I have ingested a lethal substance. She sits erect and stiff, and lowers her right ear to her right shoulder. With death as my insurance. WaLiLa lowers her shoulder blades to the ground. I am free to complete my assignment. She lowers and raises her fists with a constant steady rhythm five times. If his nectar is poisoned, it will die with me. She pounds the air with her fists, then drops her arms lifelessly. If it is not, I shall return to you and deliver the nectar. She pushes a path from her center to the space above her head. Then the smoke damage will bring my death. She lies on her side briefly. She ends by touching her forehead to the floor and rolling her hips.

  Her communication ended, WaLiLa lies back in the folds of the blanket and slips off to sleep.

  7.

  As WaLiLa sleeps, the night thickens. When the air reaches its blackest point, Pedro rides in on midnight wings. He is surprised to find his mother sleeping in his bed: the cot next to his brother’s. Pedro’s eyes rise up to the ceiling as he visualizes the only empty bed in the apartment: the bed upstairs next to WaLiLa’s. He sits on the floor between the two cots and soaks up his family’s energy. When he can keep his eyes open no longer, he rests his hand gently on his brother’s head, presses his lips to his mother’s cheek, then climbs up the stairs. Keeping his back to WaLiLa, Pedro drops his shirt and pants on the floor. He sits on the side of the bed in his boxer shorts, attempting to quell the sadness that claws at his throat every time he imagines leaving his mother and brother behind. Then he lies back, solemnly reclining as though the bed were a coffin. He clutches the images of his mother and his brother close to him and drifts off to sleep.

  WaLiLa’s innerself thumps on the inside of WaLiLa’s chest for thirty minutes, attempting to alert her to Pedro’s presence. WaLiLa soon becomes aware of the thumping, but takes another thirty minutes to rouse herself from rest. By the time she releases her innerself and rises from the bed, Pedro is in a deep sleep. With teeth clenched, WaLiLa drags herself to Pedro’s bedside. Her innerself flutters around his head. As taught during training, WaLiLa places one hand over his closed eyes and another over his abdomen,
her thumb connecting to his navel. Under her velvet touch, Pedro’s eyes do not open. He doesn’t even stir.

  WaLiLa closes her vision-centers and pushes her chin upward to the skies. As she establishes portals between their two bodies, WaLiLa begins to glow. Her innerself detects a sound and flies to the stairs, peeking over the banister to investigate. She flies over to WaLiLa and tugs at her ear. When WaLiLa opens her vision-centers, her innerself communicates Modesto’s presence at the foot of the stairs. Knowing that Modesto will soon be privy to her activities, WaLiLa tightens her grip on Pedro. She shrugs one shoulder in disappointment. She has never experienced a hunt that has failed so consistently.

  When Modesto reaches the top of the stairs, a painful sensation rips through WaLiLa’s body. Globes of poison covered in shards sharp as glass mercilessly jerk and jump around inside her torso. Her body begins to shake under the pressure of the internal wounds. Modesto stands in full view of her body, transfixed by what he sees. The moment she discovers that Pedro’s nectar is poisoned, she is no longer concerned for her life. She flexes her torso and cuts the internal portals through which Pedro’s nectar enters her body. This severing is accompanied by a loud sound of tearing through Modesto’s eardrums. The sound breaks his trance and he begins to scream his brother’s name.

  As Pedro stirs, WaLiLa pulls herself away from his body and stumbles backward. When he opens his eyes, he sees WaLiLa fall limply onto her bed. Her skin is soaked in a dark purple liquid and she is slowly losing color. When Modesto sees that WaLiLa is hurt, a mixture of terror and compassion riots across his eyes. Pedro sits up and rubs his temples. When he brings his hand down from his face, it is moist. He runs his fingers across his forehead and sees purple liquid on them. He looks down at his body. His torso is covered with the same liquid. As he jumps up and scrambles away from WaLiLa’s proximity, the haze of his sleep quickly disappears from his head.

  “They will come for me,” she murmurs to herself. “They will come for me.” Exhausted and delirious, she expires. Her body slumps into a deep coma. Long after her lids are closed, she imagines the brothers’ unblinking eyes examining her. She prays that when she opens her vision-centers she will be home. She needs to wrap herself in the thick air of her nation and vanish into the folds. She hopes to lie in maroon cloud fields over gold skies between stretches of deep purple soil. She wants to compete in flying races with her clan and never use her voice to communicate again.

  8.

  When the coma finally lifts from WaLiLa’s body, her message-center identifies the thin air rushing through her nostrils as earth’s. She pushes her eyelids open to see herself resting in the same small room where her death began. The two brothers are gone, but there is a pair of shining eyes staring at her from across the room. When the eyes see motion flicker across WaLiLa’s face, they rise from the camouflage of darkness and float closer to the bed. WaLiLa knows from the weight of the footsteps that the eyes belong to Elisa.

  Elisa hovers over the bed, filling WaLiLa’s vision-centers with a dark face creased with concern. Elisa silently pushes a glass against WaLiLa’s lips. WaLiLa turns away. Elisa stands back, places one hand on her hip, and regards her silently. Why Elisa’s face holds no anger or fear is a miracle to WaLiLa. She refuses to waste her energy wondering what the brothers have whispered about her. She prefers instead to lie with drooped lids and silent mouth, twirling her wrist with the repeated question, Will they come for me?

  “They will not come,” Elisa says, chopping through the thick silence of the room with her voice.

  WaLiLa’s vision-centers pop open and she stares into Elisa’s calm face. Seconds pass as the two examine each other in silence. Just as she is dismissing Elisa’s announcement as hallucination, Elisa speaks again.

  “They are not coming for you.”

  WaLiLa rises up onto her elbows and stares at Elisa incredulously. To her surprise, her body does not hurt when she moves it. Only her head throbs in pain.

  “Who are you?” WaLiLa demands.

  “I am Elisa,” Elisa responds with an amused smile. “I was once a nectar collector, like you, but Pedro’s aunt put an end to that, much as Pedro has done for you.”

  “But…” Questions slam through WaLiLa’s mind, battling for dominion of her lips. “How long have you been here? Did you know who I was from the beginning? Will I die here?”

  “I’ve been here longer than I care to remember. I realized what you were after you stole flowers from my altars. Before that, I only recognized you as a traveler and welcomed you as I had been welcomed on my previous earth trips. And yes, you will die here.”

  WaLiLa lies back on the bed and pounds her fists against the mattress in frustration. After seven seconds of silence, she buries her vision-centers in Elisa’s face for further explanation.

  “Does that mean…?”

  “That means your access to our people and our planet has ended. That means you shall no longer collect nectar. Do not concern yourself with this: Nectar shall be gathered, the ancestors shall be fed. But you have just been birthed. You are breathing your first breaths as a human being.”

  “A human!”

  “Yes.”

  “But I thought…”

  “I know this is confusing WaLiLa, but no one knows about us. Everything you learned about death applied to home. There has been no research done on us who have died on earth.”

  “Are there many of us?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t met any, but I’m certain they exist.”

  As water drips from her eyes, WaLiLa is overcome with sadness and confusion.

  “Don’t look so confused. You have human emotions now. You have the ability to cry. Haven’t you noticed how easily you’re speaking? You were also given the facility to speak human languages.”

  WaLiLa touches the water dripping from her eyes and rubs it between her fingertips.

  “Death is supposed to be a step toward becoming an ancestor. Are you saying we are excluded from that process because we died on earth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How could this happen?”

  “Well, the poison you consumed is known here as ‘mortality.’ It is a death agent for humans. Their death is not like ours. They consider death to be a finite thing.”

  “What is ‘finite’?”

  “It’s the opposite of infinite.”

  “But how can death be finite? Death is transformation. Death is change.”

  “WaLiLa, I know that’s what you learned, but I must remind you, you are on earth. Humans are bound by such things as time and gravity. At least they believe themselves to be.”

  “Are you saying I am to die a human death at the end of this journey?”

  “I cannot know until I meet my own death.”

  “So I am never to be anything other than human?”

  “I don’t know, WaLiLa.”

  “But this is my first life, I will know nothing else.”

  “That is not true, you are beginning your second life now. Although you still exist in the same outer shell, the reality you experience here will be different from your life as a nectar collector. I promise you that earth is not without its delights.”

  “I can’t believe we weren’t trained for this.”

  “Consider it a surprise death; we don’t know what waits for us on the other side. Meanwhile, rest. Your body is healing, the transition is not an easy one—”

  “But how—” WaLiLa interrupts.

  “We will talk later. For now, let your body do its work.”

  “But why—”

  “Rest,” Elisa repeats firmly. “You shall need your strength.”

  THE AFRICAN ORIGINS OF UFOS (EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL)

  Anthony Joseph

  (2000)

  Si dieu les a fait noir c’est qu’il doit y avoir une raison.

  Anon.

  1. Kneedeep in ditchdiggerniggersweat

  His voice had the deep burrr of a man who kept fishhooks in his b
eard. So I put on my white Teflon jump-suit, slid sleeves and levers tight, pulled my hair shut with Sirian beeswax and en-route superterranean to Toucan Bay via antimatic congo pump I met Cain waiting with the contraband: 8 grams of Ceboletta X. And while Cain stroked a reefer the size of Mozambique rolled in a popadom, I held my head wide open for the suck with a nasal>oral siphon and was so oiled and eager for Joe Sam’s return to Houdini’s that night that I sped there, down near the jetty where fish gut funk fumed furiously and found copious peoples rubbing belly to back, hacking heels, knee deep in ditchdiggerniggersweat

  That naked island funk was still lickin’ hips with polyrhythmic thunderclaps. Does the Berta butt boogie? do bump hips? flip an spin an bop’n finger pop’n subaquantum basslines pumping pure people-riddim funk like snake rubber twisting in aluminum bucket, reverberating round the frolic house with a heavy heartbeat, causing black to buck and shiver—

  WOOEEE! WOOEEEE!—

  The very groove caused coons to stumble loose and slide on saturnalian pomade until their conks collapsed. The sound possessed more swing than bachelor galvanise in hurricane, more sting than jab-jab whip, more bone than gravedigger boots and more soul than African trumpet bone, with a pure emotive speed that once improvised harmolodic funk to Buddy Bolden’s punkjazz on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain, double bass still reverberating through space-time like long lost Afronauts on orbiting saxophones, that shook Spiritual Baptist shacks with rhythm till the Sankey hymns they swung became cryptic mantras that slid like secrets through water.

  And on the balcony, ever Afrodizziac in Indian red, with her high sepia’fro, far-east eyes and morello lips borrowed from a jealous mirror, Madame Sweetbum leans back on her ass for support, puffin’ good genk and inspecting vinyl imprints in dry blue light, releasing slap after slap of the raw-boned and ancient Afrolypso she kept in aluminum sleeves, sacred 45s so sharp rip slippers off feet till steam hisses from her radio-gram. Madame Sweetbum had negroes wringing brine! Black be boogiefull, black be slick, cryptic hustlers an assorted Cyberpimps in stingy brim fedoras, scissor-tongued vipers in snakeskin brogues, in pollywool zoots with sawed off buckshots in their lapels, nubile Supian ladies throwing waist like whipsnake while rabid-eyed by stiff crotched and grinning coons in erection boots, leaning at the bar boppin’ bulbous foreheads and burning for flesh.