Turtle Island Dreaming

by Tom Crockett

  “I’m not sure I believe that you are the same young man you describe. Surely you must have had some good qualities.”

  “If I did, I don’t know what they were. Perhaps it was my love for my mother and sister, though even that was twisted.”

  Marina closed her eyes as he continued with his story. The spice and vanilla scent of the oil filled her nose. Her right leg was deeply relaxed and did not ache at all.

  “When I got older I joined a gang. Then I was the gang. It was my gang—Blood Walkers, we called ourselves. We ran the Barrio. You name it, we did it.

  “I had a woman, a girl really, she was only sixteen. She was beautiful. Her name was Carita and I loved her as much as I could love anybody. Not so much as my mama or Theresa, my sister, but a lot for me. She was a kind of beautiful treasure, a trophy. I couldn’t see women as being more than possessions, you know, property. Still, I thought I was on top of the world. I was invincible. I was eighteen, maybe nineteen, and I had managed to avoid being arrested for anything, or even being seriously injured in any way. I told people that I had the luck of the spirits. Some people believed me. I would see them make the sign of the cross when I passed. I was such a fool.”

  “Wait!” Marina interrupted. “Where was this? I mean where did you grow up?”

  Rafael paused. “I . . . can’t recall a name for it.” He seemed genuinely perplexed.

  “Was it in the United States?”

  “Yeah, I think . . . It’s weird, the names of cities come to my mind, but Los Angeles, or San Antonio, or Miami . . . they’re just names. I can’t say that I came from one and not another.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not important. Go on with your story.”

  “Well, I thought I really was untouchable. I did drive-bys. I shot people. I killed people. Terrible things.”

  Again Marina was struck by how incongruous these words were, coming from this man. She had only known him a short period of time, but she had always had good instincts about people. It was one of the things that had kept her alive in dangerous situations over the years—the ability to know whom to trust.

  “I was way out there, totally reckless. I made enemies, measured myself by my enemies, and these enemies eventually came for me. They caught me at my mother’s house. I wasn’t staying there regularly. It was too dangerous. But Carita stayed there. She was pregnant by then and her father had kicked her out, so she was staying with my mother and sister. I visited her there.”

  “And is that where you . . .” Marina did not know how to finish the sentence but Rafael just laughed softly and finished it for her.

  “Died? No, that would have been a blessing.” His voice betrayed a hint of bitterness. “But then again, maybe yes, maybe I did die, then.

  “Here I was, this macho man hiding behind women, behind my mama and my sister and Carita. And I got away. I was so proud of myself. I slipped away, cheated death. I was the master of my world.”

  Rafael paused for a long time. Marina looked up at him, studied his face in the flickering candlelight. His eyes were closed and his hands were still firm and gentle as he massaged her leg.

  “It wasn’t until later that night that I heard. They had killed mama and Theresa and Carita. I had killed them really—began killing them the moment I was born. I guess I died then, though it took a few more hours for me to find death. I told myself I wanted revenge, but I just wanted the pain to go away. I went out alone. I think I had a gun, but in the end I never even took it out of my pocket. I walked the streets in the early hours of the morning. I cursed God and shouted taunts. I imagined enemies in every dark place, but just found my own shadow. I crossed borders. It took them a long time to kill me. I think they thought I was some kind of holy fool. We confused religion and superstition a lot in the Barrio. We were children. We made up our own myths, our own rites of passage.

  “In the end, though, they could not let me live. They killed me. I don’t remember how really, only that I was glad of it, relieved somehow. Then I woke up here.”

  “And when was that?” Marina asked. “How long have you been here?”

  “I don’t know really. I’ve lost track of time.” He gestured at the weaving. “At least that long, though I couldn’t really tell you how long I’ve been working on it.”

  He was silent after that. He had finished massaging Marina’s legs and though she wished he would offer to continue, she said nothing, letting him sit with his memories.

  After a while she touched his hand. “I believe you must have changed from the person who did those things,” she said solemnly.

  “Changed? Yes, I suppose that is the best we can hope for, that we change over time. But we can never escape from what we’ve done.”

  “How do you bear the past?” Marina asked. “I mean, I have terrible memories. I feel weighed down with guilt. It’s why I chose to die. I still can’t imagine going back, being alive again. I would just be returning to that pain.”

  “Well, I suppose I just take every moment as a kind of gift. I try to see it for what it is.”

  “You mean you don’t think about the past?”

  “No. I think about the past. I think about what I’ve done, but I do it fully. When I think about the past I give it all my attention. I try to avoid lingering half in the past and half in the present or future. I think you should be in one place, in one time, as completely as you can.”

  Marina considered this. “And where are you right now?”

  Rafael smiled at her, understanding the subtle tug back into the present. He cupped his hands together and brought them prayerlike up to his face. He opened them slightly, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply.

  “Vanilla, cinnamon, cloves,” he intoned the words like a mantra, like an incantation, “coconut, the oils from your skin, the oils from mine, heat, passion, a little regret, uncertainty, a bit of lust.”

  He read the scents and the moment accurately and it made Marina blush. She did not expect the desire that had been building in her to go unnoticed, but she also did not expect to be rendered so transparent.

  She sat up slowly until her face was inches from his. She wanted him to kiss her, but instead found her mouth drawn to his. She kissed him and he kissed her back. It was a soft kiss, passionate, but tentative. When she pressed a second kiss, he backed away.

  “Not yet,” he whispered.

  “Why not?” Marina asked. She was breathless and agitated.

  “You’re not ready.”

  “No, I am,” she pleaded, but he touched her thigh and drew her attention to her leg. They both looked at the little turtle tattoo. It had moved to the top side of her thigh, halfway between her knee and her hip.

  “Soon, perhaps, but not now. You are not strong enough yet. You are still learning to walk. Besides, I have work to finish in the morning.”

  Marina slumped back onto her elbows. She knew he desired her as much as she desired him, but he seemed determined. “How do you know that’s what the turtle means?”

  “It’s what I learned when I first came here. Now try to sleep.” Rafael stood up in one easy, fluid movement. He moved like a cat, extinguishing the candles he’d lit earlier. He left one next to Marina and placed his palm against her cheek. She closed her eyes and inhaled. She tried to smell the scents he’d described. The vanilla and cinnamon came easy. She could even find the coconut. The other smells, hers and his, she could only find by imagining them.

  When she opened her eyes again, he was gone. She could see him outside of the hut, swaying in the hammock, bathed in moonlight. She contemplated going to him, rising up, slipping from her jacket, and offering herself. She wanted to make love to him, to have him make love to her. She was still attracted to him despite everything he had told her about his past. She was not usually enamored of dark and dangerous men, so her attraction was not simply a habit. She still couldn’t join in her imagination the angry and violent young man he had described with the Rafael she sensed now. It was a strange feeling, this desir
e.

  She had once had relationships, long periods of time spent with only one man. Sex was good—passionate and later comfortable. She enjoyed the physicality of these relationships, but her life, her career, were hard on others. Long separations took a toll on her relationships, and her focus on her work drained much of the energy she might have had to commit to a man.

  Eventually love affairs replaced relationships in her life. Short intense bursts of passion shared with colleagues thrown together in difficult circumstances made up the life of her heart. She was usually aware that she was only escaping into someone else in these affairs. But she knew that the men she slept with were escaping into her as well.

  When love affairs became simply lovers, she had all but lost interest in sex anyway. It wasn’t that she didn’t want and sometimes crave it, but it was never satisfying. It was an itch that no amount of scratching seemed to relieve. She only felt distant and empty afterward, a bit player in her own erotic drama.

  So she had given up that part of herself, lived celibate, and convinced herself that she was happy—or at least as happy as she was capable of being. And now, here she was in some kind of afterlife, craving the feeling of a man. Well, why not, she thought, if I can be hungry here, if I can hurt, if I can taste and smell and feel, then why can’t I make love?

  Marina contented herself with remembering the feeling of Rafael’s hands on her legs. Both her legs felt deliciously relaxed. She realized she was tired. She blew out the candle, and, while she did not fall asleep immediately, neither did she stay awake long.

  * * *

  She woke early in the morning, but Rafael was already at work on the loom. Marina ate some fruit and sipped a cup of tea in silence. She rinsed off in the stream and studied the turtle tattoo. It had moved a little, higher and to the inside. It now seemed alive to her, as if it was following some instinctual course across the landscape of her body. She thought about walking back down to the pond, but did not want to run into the women again so she sat as quietly as she could. It did not last long.

  “Will you finish today?” Marina finally asked when she could keep quiet no longer.

  “Maybe, I’m not sure. Soon, though. I must finish soon.” Rafael did not turn to look at her but continued weaving as he spoke.

  “Why?”

  “I must have the story woven. It’s . . . it’s my full confession, and I must tell it all before they come.”

  “Before who comes?” As she asked the question, she already knew the answer. “The women? Your wraiths?”

  “Yes. They are the guardians. I cannot move on until I have satisfied them.”

  Marina thought about this. “Do I have guardians?”

  “I don’t know.” He was answering in short, clipped sentences. Marina recognized the pattern. Whenever she was working, absorbed in a task, and others asked her questions, she tended to answer the same way. She knew she was distracting him, but she couldn’t help from continuing.

  “What was it like when you first woke up here?”

  Rafael’s shoulders slumped in recognition that he was not going to be left to work in silence and that he could not do two things simultaneously. Resigned, he turned to face her. All at once Marina felt guilty about pulling him away from his weaving. She knew she was being selfish, but she wanted to indulge herself. The look on Rafael’s face, however, was not one of disappointment. Somehow in the turning toward her he had resolved to answer her questions with the same presence and energy he had put into his weaving.

  “I was angry. I was very weak, almost an invalid, but still I tried to hurt myself. It felt, at first, too much like being alive. I wanted to be punished, I wanted pain, and here I felt almost nothing. Later I gained some strength, began to get feeling back. Then it occurred to me that I was alone and that terrified me worse than the prospect of any physical pain.

  “I had always been afraid of being left alone. My father had left us when I was an infant. Sometimes my mother would leave us alone when she went to work and couldn’t find anyone to stay with me and my half-sister. So I became good at making myself the center of things. I was never alone. I had my gang or my women, or my family . . . always someone. Then I was here and alone.

  “I survived. There was fresh water and fruit, and I learned to catch fish. I lived on the beach then. I explored a little, but there seemed to be some limit to how far I could go. I could walk along the beach all day and when I turned around it was always only a short walk back to where I had started. I wasn’t ready to move on, though I didn’t understand any of that then.”

  “So no one came to you, you didn’t see . . . ,” Marina struggled with what to say—what to call the creature who had helped her get her strength back and learn to walk again, “a Turtle Woman?”

  Rafael shook his head. “No . . . no one, but Mai-Ling saw her. She had the same tattoo as you, though I’m not sure what that means.”

  “Who was Mai-Ling?”

  “The woman who was here before me. The woman who taught me . . . ,” Rafael paused, smoothed the cloth wrap he wore and picked at its edge, “how to weave.” Marina sensed there was more to this story, but she was also aware of Rafael’s discomfort.

  “So . . . this was her loom?” Marina probed gently.

  “No. She found it here, found all of this just as I did. She wasn’t even a weaver. She carved beautiful wooden bowls.” Marina had noticed the wooden bowls they ate and drank from. They were smooth and polished with dark oils. They seemed to fit her hands perfectly. She glanced at one of the bowls that held a candle.

  “Yes,” Rafael added, “the bowls are hers. She left them behind.”

  “But you said she taught you to weave. How could she do that if she wasn’t a weaver?”

  “I’m not sure either of us ever understood that. She seemed to be able to teach me to weave, to find patterns, to bind strands into a whole fabric, even though she herself did not weave. She said it was what she had to teach me, and I’m sure it was something I had to learn.”

  “Then was she like the Turtle Woman I met? Was she a teacher or a spirit?”

  “No . . . she was as real as you or me.” He laughed as he said this and Marina laughed, too. “She could recall her own death and her coming to the island. She spoke of an old woman with a turtle tattoo on her back. She even had a turtle tattoo, though hers looked different and moved more slowly.”

  Marina touched the tattoo on her own thigh. “You said she had something to teach you. How do you know that?”

  “You always meet people who have things to teach you, if you’re open to it. That’s just the way the world really works. At least that’s how we came to understand it.”

  “You and Mai-Ling?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what did you have to teach her?”

  This question seemed to trouble Rafael. He took a long time to answer and Marina was about to ask another question, to change the subject, when he finally spoke.

  “At first I couldn’t imagine that there was anything I could teach her. She seemed so calm, so centered, so at peace with herself—everything I wasn’t.” Marina found it odd that if she had to describe what fascinated her most about Rafael, it would be these same qualities. She considered telling him this, but he continued. “But what she didn’t understand was how beautiful she was.” Marina was silent. She waited for Rafael to go on.

  “Mai-Ling was an artist. I had never known anyone like that before. She was maybe thirty when she smoked enough opium to make it pretty painless to slit her wrists.” Marina remembered the painless fog of her own opium days. She winced at the image that came to her and caught herself on the edge of an opinion about a woman she didn’t know. Who was she to pass judgment on someone else’s decision to end their life?

  “She said that she’d wrestled with depression most of her life and in the end it grew to be too much for her. When she was younger a man she’d been in love with burned her face with a hot iron. She had a terrible scar, up here.�
� Rafael made a gesture about two inches long up near his right eye. “But it didn’t matter, you know, she was still really beautiful. She kind of glowed from the inside, but she never saw that when she looked in a mirror. She taught me how to make something, how to find a center like she had, and I showed her how attractive she was. I suppose it was a fair trade.”

  Suddenly Marina felt guilty. For all her questions and her probing, she had shared little of herself. All she’d done was take since she’d arrived—as if Rafael, and in fact everything she encountered on the island, was there for her benefit.

  Slowly, carefully, she offered her story, and he accepted it as though it were a gift. She talked about waking up on the island and the turtle women, then realized she had to go further back. She went back to the dream she had had as she drowned, which took her back to the cruise and beyond. She told him of her career, of her loss of feeling, her emptiness. He asked questions and sometimes she digressed. He prepared food for them, they ate, the day slipped away and still she told her story. In the end, when she could think of nothing more to say, she stopped.

  She was aroused by the conversation, by sharing so much, excited by a man who would listen so patiently, so completely. For Marina, this was as much foreplay as any kiss or caress could be.

  “So what do you have to teach me?” she asked coyly.

  “What do you need to learn?”

  “The Turtle Woman said that I needed balance. She said that I needed light to balance my darkness. Do you have any light?” She smiled as she said this, aware that she was leaning close to him, conscious of the flirtation.

  “I don’t know what I have to give you. I didn’t know what I had to offer Mai-Ling at the time.”

  “Perhaps you are supposed to teach me to weave.” She wrapped her hand over his hand, twining her fingers in between his fingers. She said this half in jest, but he answered it as though she meant it seriously.

  “I don’t think so. You’re already an artist. You have that ability to find beauty in the world, to see the patterns. You may not honor or value your gift, but you know you have it. No . . . I have nothing to teach you there.”