A soft breeze plundered the rosebushes as he spoke and shook blossoms onto the pathway.
“I think someone besides us wants you to have them,” Florian said, stooping to pick them up and hand them to me. One two three. “Wind spirit.”
“Wash the petals and put them in a pot of distilled water with cinnamon, simmer until they lose their color,” Tatiana said. “Let it cool, strain the water, put it in a spray bottle, and refrigerate it.”
In my mind, I heard my refrigerator bang, and shuddered involuntarily.
“It all depends on what exactly you’re dealing with,” she went on. “Espíritu maligno? Or something else. Unfortunately I can’t diagnose that. It can only come from you. When you are ready. But you might meet resistance.”
Was she talking about Grant? Espíritu maligno didn’t sound good. Clark nibbled his cuticles; I could tell he was as frustrated with the whole conversation as I was. But we still purchased two tiny glass bottles of flower-and-gem essences Tatiana had made herself. Star of Bethlehem, rock rose, and aspen mixed with obsidian for Clark. Gentian, gray spider flower, hornbeam, and dog rose with clear quartz and amethyst for me.
“You need to feel more joy,” she said. “Not give up on life. Sí, I think so. And the quartz and amethyst are to help develop your psychic abilities. For your friend?” She looked at Clark, who blushed. “More self-confidence. Less fear.”
I heard him whisper, “Not again.”
Ignoring Clark, I patted some of the essence onto the inside of my wrist. “You too,” I said, and he did the same, but he didn’t look too happy about it.
As we were about to leave, I turned to Tatiana. “Is there anything else you can tell us?” I asked. “Please.”
A worried look rippled the placid surface of her face, a breeze on deep blue-violet water. “You have the roses. And the essences. The book and the ring. The rest I can’t tell you. It must come from . . .”
“Yeah, from us, we know,” Clark said.
Tatiana shook her head, so the curls moved like small, shiny clusters of grapes. She put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “I gave you what I could. I can’t tell you any more than that. I’m sorry.”
Clark and I walked out of Casa Floribunda with mysterious gifts and unanswered questions, as if the house were a fairyland, a place we didn’t want to leave but knew if we didn’t, we would get lost there forever.
We got in the car and sat in silence for a while. I noticed his leg was jiggling.
“How about we shoot some hoops at my house?” he said.
“What?” I looked up, trying to see if Grant was there. No sign of him.
“I don’t know. She said you needed to feel more joy or whatever. We could get some dinner and then play basketball.”
“You’re sure?”
He ignored the worry in my voice. Seemed like Tatiana’s essences were already working. “Yeah. I used to play. As a kid. I just was never like him.”
So we drove back over Suicide Bridge to get some take-out Vietnamese pho noodles in broth with fresh herbs and some fresh-squeezed limeade and then went back to Clark’s house. His parents weren’t there. We ate the food and then we shot baskets in the driveway until the sun went down in the west to the rhythm of the ball on the cement, and the sky behind the palm trees was streaked with quickly fading pink light.
I was relieved to see how bad Clark was at the game and that we were both laughing.
Grant didn’t show.
I ALMOST INVITED CLARK in but I thought better of it, worried that Grant might come after all. He seemed to have a preference for visiting me at night in my room.
So I was alone when I simmered the roses in a pot of boiling distilled water, added a cinnamon stick, strained it, and put it into a spray bottle in the refrigerator when it cooled, as Tatiana had instructed me. I also tried to use the eye charts she’d given me and I took the herbal tincture from Daiyu and applied Tatiana’s gem essences.
But as I’d told Clark, I didn’t know what else to do.
Lighting white candles in my dark room, I asked the Ouija board again, but nothing happened. The marker sat leadenly on the board. Not even a NO.
“Grandma,” I called, crying in my bed, my face pushed into a lavender sachet I’d found in her jewelry box, wanting her comfort, her wisdom, the safe space of her arms.
“Grandma!”
The Emily Dickinson poem I had read to her the day she died was reciting itself in my head. “A Visitor in Marl.”
I got up and took the book off my shelf for the first time since that day. When I opened it, a piece of paper fell out. I was surprised I hadn’t seen it on the day my grandmother died, but I might not have paid any attention to it then if I had. Death can give significance to every detail that came before.
Unfolding the piece of paper, I saw it was an advertisement for a store in Joshua Tree, California. ED RAINWATER DESIGNS. Apparently the shop sold small, carved bone figures, dream catchers, jewelry. And one more thing—the thing we needed: sage. Of the somewhat rare Salvia dorrii variety.
As I read the word, the refrigerator banged louder than ever and the walls of the apartment shook. It was 12:03. Again. I shuddered almost as violently as the appliance, realizing that this was always the time of the banging. I went into the kitchen. The same vile smell was in the air.
Why did my grandmother have this advertisement? And why had I found it now when Salvia dorrii was exactly what Clark and I needed?
I was going to wake my mother and tell her, when Luke came in behind me, wearing a bathrobe, swearing at the refrigerator. I glanced down at Tatiana’s ring on my finger. It was a disgusting bile-green color. I looked at Luke and the same ugly green hovered around him. The combination of the sound and smell and color made my stomach clutch.
“Is there some kind of alarm that makes this thing go off at midnight every time?” Luke said. “Damn, can’t someone get a new refrigerator? What the fuck?”
Three things came to my mind then (four if you counted the thought Luke is an asshole), the three things that had been rat-scratching at the back of my brain since the first time the refrigerator banged, and not allowing my conscious mind to trap them.
Tatiana: “You may meet resistance.”
The internet article: “All spirits may manifest through household appliances, creating shaking, bumping, hammering, and other auditory disturbances.”
And this: I went back to my room, sat down at the computer, typed in GRANT MORRISON. Reread the article.
Grant Morrison, seventeen . . . was killed in a hit-and-run incident this Saturday . . . at 12:03 a.m.
I HAD NO IDEA if there was a correlation between the banging refrigerator and Grant or if my exhausted, anxious mind had created one, but it certainly looked like the connection was real. I thought of Clark, laughing when I passed him the basketball, long limbs akimbo and the moose hat on his head. Tatiana had told us that she had been taken over by her mother, lost all that weight. Would anything be left of Clark at all if his dead brother took over his body forever?
It was time to send Grant back to wherever he came from.
I didn’t even bother trying to talk to my mother; I called Clark and woke him. “We have to go to Joshua Tree this weekend,” I said.
THE WEEK SEEMED to take forever. Clark and I followed our pattern of seeing each other only at school and staying busy with homework at night so we wouldn’t tempt Grant to come. But no matter how much I read Lady Chatterley’s Lover or studied for my math exam, nothing really distracted me from what I knew we were going to do when the weekend came.
Early Saturday morning I put on a hoodie, Doc Marten boots, and cutoffs over pink-and-black-striped tights, and packed a backpack with water, sunscreen, and PowerBars. I’d taken off work from Treasure Hunt in order to go on an “important family outing” as I’d called it. Mrs. Carol had happily obliged, asking me to keep an eye out for any good flea markets or garage sales; she seemed impressed with my fashion choic
es and how I dressed the mannequins in the windows.
“Where are you going?” my mom asked, shuffling into the kitchen in her bathrobe and slippers while I ate some toast. She blinked at the light and rubbed her eyes with her fists. “It’s so early.”
“Clark and I are going to the desert.”
“Oh, sounds fun. I’m so glad you have each other,” she said.
I wanted to say, Yeah, so you don’t feel as guilty about abandoning me, but I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to start an argument and hit the road too late.
“Well, I’m staying at Luke’s tonight so don’t worry if you get home and I’m not here,” my mom said, kissing my cheek before going back to bed.
As if to punctuate her words, the refrigerator banged.
“Have fun,” I growled at both of them.
4. RAINWATER
The light in the desert was different from the city, as Clark and I arrived there late that morning. Beautiful and clear, but pitiless was the word I thought of mostly, no shadows to soften things under the shimmering blue-white sky. The Joshua trees huddled watchfully along the road, their twisted arms pointing in different directions as if trying to confuse us.
Ed Rainwater’s shop was on a ranch off the highway across from the Joshua Tree National monument. We drove up a dirt road and parked in front of the low sand-colored adobe building with a corral where a black stallion switched his tail at us.
Cactus and creosote grew by the front door. A sign read RAINWATER SAGE AND SWEAT. When we walked inside, we saw an extravagantly tall man in sunglasses, sitting on a stool behind a counter. At his side was a three-legged dog that resembled a coyote. Both of them shone with almost blinding white light in spite of the dimness of the room. The light was so strong that I wanted to ask Clark if he saw it. Especially the dog! Who knew dogs had auras like that?! I held my hand near Clark’s face, so he would notice how the stone in my ring had brightened, but he didn’t seem to see. He was preoccupied with the shop.
There were some cases full of polished stones and small figures carved out of bone, and intricate, feathered dream catchers hung from the ceiling. Bundles of dried sage covered the walls and I could smell the cleansing scent of the leaves smoldering in a small ceramic bowl. A German shepherd without ears and a pit bull with a scarred face were sleeping quietly on a worn brown leather couch.
“Are you Ed Rainwater?” I asked, and the tall man nodded. Then I introduced myself and Clark, and Ed shook our hands with his huge, calloused ones. They even made Clark’s look small.
“What brings you here?” Ed Rainwater leaned forward and tilted up his sunglasses. I saw why he kept them on inside—not to scare away the customers; his eyes were fierce and full of so much feeling it was hard to meet their gaze for long.
“We need some sage,” I said. “For a ritual.”
Ed shook his head as he scattered tobacco onto a rolling paper. “What do you know about rituals?”
Neither of us said anything. We stood stiffly, side by side, not sure what to do next. Finally Clark said, “We’re trying to learn, sir.”
Ed rolled his cigarette slowly. His voice was gruff. “Looking for some kicks? Some native enlightenment?”
“No, sir,” I said. “With all respect, we take this seriously. And even though I don’t know anything about it, I’m half Cherokee.” The words surprised me when I said them. I hoped they didn’t sound disrespectful.
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, my father. He was full-blooded, supposedly. But I’ve never met him.”
Ed looked at me, then at Clark, then back at me, then reached for a cowboy hat on the counter and set it over his black hair. He stood up, smoothing out his jeans along lengthy thighs, and picked up a bundle of the dried sage from the counter. “Come on.”
I noticed a slight limp as he led us through the house to the back where desert plants—date palms and cactus—grew around a large cedar hot tub by a barbecue pit. The air smelled of charcoal and chlorine and a plant I knew was the fresh sagebrush. It had a pungent, head-clearing aroma that reminded me of the camphor my grandmother would rub on my chest when I had a cough.
Ed Rainwater knelt by the plant and picked off a leaf between his thumb and middle finger, holding it up for me to smell. My head felt instantly clear, almost as if I had jumped into a pool of water.
“This is what you want.”
I took the leaf and held it carefully in my palm. The look on Ed’s face, the whole gesture of his body as he handed it to me, told me this wasn’t just any plant.
He gave us the bundle of dried sage he’d carried out with him. “We grow it special here. It’s a rare form of Salvia dorrii. You light it when you’re ready.”
“What else do we do?” I asked. “If you don’t mind . . . we’re trying to release a spirit.”
“See old Otto here?” he said. The German shepherd, who had followed us out, came over and put his head on Ed’s bent knee. “They cut off his ears to make him a more aggressive fighter. What he went through should have killed him, but he didn’t let it. Didn’t let it kill his spirit. Most animals that are brutalized to that extent aren’t redeemable, that’s what people say. He came right into my arms when he saw me. The gentlest beast I’ve ever known.”
“He’s amazing,” I said. “But I don’t understand how this relates. I’m sorry, Mr. Rainwater, I don’t want to be rude, it’s just really frustrating.”
“You’ll understand when the time is right. No one can tell you. You have to find it in your own heart. Frightening as it may be.”
So not helpful. I tried to explain, hoping it might make him change his mind. “I was trying to reach my grandma,” I said. “But I haven’t been able to. Clark’s brother came instead. And it’s getting really frightening, you’re right. I need some kind of instruction or . . .”
Ed kicked at some dirt with the toe of his cowboy boot.
“You have to develop your skills.”
“You mean because she can see colors and stuff?” Clark said.
“More than that. Your friend has a gift that can magnetize certain spirits.” He wouldn’t stop looking at me. I blinked hard and had to turn away.
“So Julie’s a . . .” Clark started. “What do you call it? She has a spiritual gift?”
Ed nodded. “On her way to becoming. There are different terms.”
I suppressed a nervous and inappropriate laugh, then hiccuped. “If that’s true—and it just doesn’t seem like I could be that, or have that, or whatever—but if it’s true, what am I supposed to do with it? And by the way, I am so not ready.”
Just then, a woman emerged from the building and we all turned and stared at her. I found it difficult to breathe. Metallic gold light was everywhere, even flickering in the ring on my finger. She had very long black hair, and skin that shone almost as much as the gold bracelets she wore. I couldn’t tell how old she was. She smiled at me and extended a long hand that smelled mildly of cloves.
“I’m Amrita. Very nice to meet you.” Her voice had a sweet, lightly sticky sound like honey made from orange blossoms, the V purred into a W sound. The dog Otto came and sat on top of her feet.
“Thank you,” I said, still stunned at how gorgeous she was, like a Hindu goddess statue. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was hiding a few extra arms behind her back.
“We’ll buy the sage,” I said. “But we really need some more help.” I looked at Amrita, trying to appeal to the goddess of compassion.
Ed and Amrita exchanged a glance. “You should stay for dinner,” she said.
ED LIT A FIRE in the pit and we barbecued foil-wrapped fish and buttered vegetables on the coals. A light rain fell onto the protective awning, unleashing what Ed called the powerful medicine of the creosote that could clear the mind of all shadows. He told us that he had been a psychologist in Los Angeles but that he’d had to get away from the city.
“I had a practice there, but I can help people better when I’m not constantly fighting
my environment,” he said.
“So how did you come here?” Amrita asked us, stroking Otto’s head.
I told them about Daiyu, Tatiana, and Florian, and the flyer in my grandmother’s book. And I told them about the Ouija board and Grant.
Amrita’s eyes had a faraway look as if she were watching a movie projected against the sky. “You have to prepare yourself.”
As she spoke, clouds parted to reveal the sunset through the rain. We looked at the sky surrounding us on all sides and a rainbow appeared, as if painted in watercolor by a vast hand. It felt like some kind of a sign (from my grandmother?) and Ed and Amrita seemed to think so, too.
“The rainbow woman’s come to visit,” he said.
Amrita reached for his hand and nodded at him. He looked into her eyes and then leaned forward on his elbows and stirred the coals in the fire with a stick. Red sparks flew up, a kind of warning.
“I think your grandmother is with you,” Amrita said. “Deep inside you, even if she’s keeping quiet.” She looked at Ed. “Tell them the other part.”
He scowled at us and I shivered, pulling my sleeves down over my fingers. I had worn holes in most of my long-sleeved shirts from doing this so often. “You’re dealing with another spirit, too. One who doesn’t want to leave. We can help you by doing a sweat and some meditation techniques.”
Meditation? The idea of sitting still like that made me anxious just to think of it. Amrita noticed and stroked her long braid as she spoke. “It can be learned. It’s to calm the mind in the face of chaos and ultimately prepare us for our transition to the next realm. You may need it for something else, I’m guessing. A vibrational protection.”
“A vibrator protector?” Clark said. He seemed to make especially bad jokes when he was anxious. I whacked his arm. Amrita ignored us and went on. “You conceive that your cells are vibrating very fast, much faster than anything that is trying to invade your energy body. It creates a barrier.”
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