26
AS WE WAITED FOR THE rescue crew to arrive, Thomas mounted the cliff once more to clean and bandage my arm with the first aid kit he’d packed. The white bandage went around and around while my eyes stayed fixed on Kaya’s shape under the blanket far below. I couldn’t feel anything. Not the coyote’s wound on my arm. Not my grief. Not the chill that had begun to set in with the sunset. Thomas had put on his hoodie over his bare torso and brought me my sweater. But I refused it. The fabric felt foreign and repulsive. Too soft and warm for me, for this life.
It was a long time before Thomas decided I was ready to descend. I went straight to Kaya’s side. I touched her face. I told her to get up, that everything would be okay now. That we’d all switch back and life would return to normal.
But I couldn’t stop crying. This wasn’t right at all. I should be strong now, free of pain. I shouldn’t be able to cry, and I’d cried more this week than I ever had before. Maybe Jay should have just let me stay sick. Sometimes being well was more confusing.
Circle home, Lo.
Where is home?
Kit made a campfire in the ravine, not far from Kaya, to keep us warm while we waited. The flames bounced shadows of boulders across her body as though trying to nudge her awake. A tendril of smoke snaked into the sky above the mountain as if it was signaling something. What was it trying to tell me? I needed answers. I needed Jay.
The EMTs worked for an hour to retrieve Kaya from the rubble of rock and bone that surrounded her. They insisted on treating my arm, though the bites weren’t that deep after all, as if the coyote hadn’t really meant to do lasting damage. I declined a rabies shot. I knew it was my disease, not hers, that had driven Dakota to attack.
Thomas told the rescue crew that Kaya had accidentally fallen off the cliff while we explored the ravine together. It was just a tragic hiking accident that happened while we were playing hooky. Had nothing to do with souls or spirits of the dead or American history or our dumb problems that we’d been so desperate to unload that we’d put our friend in mortal danger.
Now that the worst had happened, Thomas didn’t seem so afraid anymore. Even hiking down the mountain by flashlight behind Kaya’s body, he didn’t falter once, and he made sure that we didn’t either. Then I had a thought that temporarily woke me from my daze. I wondered if his burden was gone forever. If it had died with Kaya. And I wondered if I would eternally carry her analgesia now that she had breathed her last. I looked down at the bandage on my arm and regretted everything I’d done. Messing with nature, messing with my particular lot of suffering.
But if I were to carry Kaya’s burden, I would honor it. I would not complain. It would be her legacy.
We followed the rescue crew and Kaya’s stretcher back to solid, level earth. Then we said goodbye to our beloved friend. Before she was put in the flashing but dreadfully silent ambulance for the long drive back to Santa Fe, Thomas tucked their shared bear totem into his pocket, and I placed our deer in her hand, closing her ragged fingertips around it before they went cold. Then the four of us who remained tore down the road back to Pecos Park. It was the only place that seemed right. The only place that held any hope.
Kit searched for quiet music on the radio, but all we heard were emergency broadcasts about the flames just north of us. We switched off the warnings and drove in silence. I took a detour to avoid the roadblock I heard was installed on the road to Los Alamos. We accelerated into the smoke.
Which brings us back to the beginning.
27
MY HAND FLASHED THROUGH THE flames in the center of the Pueblo kiva. I dropped Kaya’s baby tooth in the middle of the hallowed fire. It just seemed right to burn the relic like coal. I could not keep that reminder of her body.
But was I myself a reminder of her body?
Thomas stood up on his blanket and limped to the timeworn wall encircling us. He seemed infinitely weary as he leaned his head against the stone pillar that kept the roof from collapsing. He was done fighting.
“We just need to return things to the way they were,” he said. Maybe he hadn’t given up on me after all. He walked toward the fire, kicking up a small cloud of glittering sand. I couldn’t stop myself from morbid speculations. Were the burned remains of ancient bodies mixed in with the granules? Kaya had told us what had happened on this land centuries ago. What had happened to her people. And now she’d met a similar fate.
“We just need to be ourselves again,” Thomas continued. “We can’t bring back Kaya, but we can reclaim our old identities. No matter how heavy they are. No matter how much they hurt.”
I shuddered, but I knew Thomas was right. Our past selves were the only options we had left. Those imperfect selves were the only ones who still had a chance of surviving.
The sunrise beamed down through the keyhole in the roof and mingled with the smoke and flames, as if the rays had been waiting throughout the dark night for a worthy dance partner. Dance. . . . It had just been Wednesday night when we all moved in the casita together, but now it seemed like lifetimes ago. One lifetime.
I made up my mind to do everything I could to save these three people. They had become my friends. And one of them had become much more than that. If Jay’s magic was strong enough to turn a deer into a bear and a mountain into a volcano, then maybe it could turn death back into life.
28
“JAY,” I SAID TO THE solemn man standing near the ladder. “Please, bring her back. You have to bring her back.”
“Bring her back?” he said.
“Yes. You have to save Kaya.”
“We can’t resurrect her, Lo. But we can set her free.”
“No! I don’t accept that. There must be a way. You’ve got to know some magic for . . . accidents. There must be another ritual. Look in your bag. Look in your pockets. Spit on me. Smudge me. Do something, anything. Kaya wasn’t supposed to die. You have to see how wrong this is—”
“Kaya is gone,” Jay said, “and there’s nothing we can do. While we can grieve the loss, we cannot undo it. We can let it shape us as Kaya was shaped by her own losses. Strong souls like your friend’s can persist long after the body has departed, but unfortunately you cannot reverse her physical fate.”
“So that’s it?” I said. “She’s just . . . dead?” Like Karine. Another person I loved, gone. What kind of a miserable shape could I make from this? All I could think of was a heart broken down the middle.
“Kaya’s soul was too fluid, too porous,” Jay said. “It couldn’t establish boundaries.”
“So she was punished for that?” Kit said.
“She was not punished,” Jay said. “Nor was she rewarded. She simply was. She simply fell.”
At that moment I wanted to fall too. In some ways I felt I already had. It had never been my body at stake this week. It had always been my soul.
“My darling children,” Jay said. “You’ve gone astray. You need to return to the right path. I trust you to find it.” Then, without another word, he made his way up the ladder.
“Where are you going?” I shouted as he disappeared through the smoke hole. “Come back and help us!”
But then I realized that we didn’t need him anymore. Jay’s magic still remained in the kiva, circulating among our bodies. And I alone knew how to use it.
29
“HE’S NOT COMING BACK,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m going to conduct the ritual without him.”
“Wonderful,” Kit said. “And what exactly qualifies you? Were you a spiritual guru in a past life? Or did you just play with a Ouija board once at a sleepover? Right before your Agua girlfriends put your bra into deep freeze?”
“Please, Kit,” I said. “I got us into this, didn’t I? Please give me a chance to make amends. I think I know how.”
A calm descended on our chamber, and our previous bickering seemed to dissolve with th
e night. Thomas sat silently, back in hibernation. Next to him Ellen painstakingly scratched Kaya’s name into the kiva wall with her lighter. Suddenly even the graffiti and other modern markings in the chamber seemed sacred in their own way. Though the story they told might not have been beautiful, it was true. And utterly human.
“Did everyone bring their totems?” I said.
Kit reached inside his pocket for Ellen’s raccoon. Ellen untied my horse from her neck, and Thomas withdrew Kit’s rabbit from his pocket, as well as his and Kaya’s bear. I was the only one without a totem to give back. I clenched my numb and empty hand. I knew exactly what I wanted to say.
“Thomas, Ellen, and Kit. My friends. This week we have all proved to ourselves and to each other that we are more than our burdens. We know now that our burdens can never define us, that pain is a part of life that we cannot ignore or fight off or destroy. We can only accept it and live in its moments, just like everything else. We must take the lessons from this week and live with souls full of light and purpose, full of each other, and especially full of Kaya. Now we are ready to receive back our burdens. With gratitude for what they have taught us.” I approached Ellen, who was more pensive than I’d ever seen her.
“Ellen,” I said, “I hereby take back my symptoms. . . . I see now that the reason I was suffering so much is because I was trying to do it alone. Now I feel that I can accept my illness, whatever it is. With a community to support us, we can accept anything.” Ellen handed me the horse. I seemed to feel its power in my palm.
“I’ll be right there with you, Lo,” she said. “Like you were there for me this week. I promise.” I hugged her.
Then Ellen walked over to Kit, who faced her fearlessly. “Kit,” she said, “I hereby take back my burden. Through watching you this week, I’ve seen that life doesn’t need to be clouded over with fear . . . or masked with drugs. Now I just want to take the bad with the good. I want things to be real. By always looking for an escape hatch, I miss the beauty around me. Now I will try to see clearly.” Kit placed the raccoon in her palm.
“You’re part of the beauty,” he said. “We want you here in the real world. With us.” Ellen drew the raccoon to her chest and held it there for a moment, meeting Kit’s undaunted gaze with her own.
Then Kit turned to Thomas. “Thomas,” he said, “my brother. I take back my fear. I’m sorry that I made you scared. Before this week, I never would have thought that was possible. We can recognize that human beings are vulnerable without being paralyzed by that knowledge. And there are good, helpful spirits who work in the dark. Not just monsters.” Thomas gave Kit his rabbit, then pulled him into an enduring bear hug.
Now Thomas stood quietly with his totem. “If I could speak to Kaya right now,” he said, “I’d tell her. . . .” His eyes filled with tears. “I’d tell her that I’m sorry for what I inflicted on her. Seeing her on the mountain last night, it was like I recognized my own trauma for the first time. But there was no time to help her process and . . . metabolize what she was reliving. Without being able to make sense of her suffering, or dull its immediacy, she was . . . doomed. And I see now that . . . I can’t go that same route. I have too much to live for. I think . . . I know that if I face my past now, with the help of others, I can heal.” I wrapped my arms around him.
We didn’t expect to feel the effects of the swap right away, if at all, and so we simply sat on our blankets, waiting for the day to be over, communing with our individual thoughts. Which all centered on Kaya, if my own focus was any indication.
Before we could leave, I knew there was one final thing I needed to do. “I’m going up,” I said, “but you all take as long as you need.”
Back out in the open, the clouds of smoke from the north were smaller, sputtering. My father had put out the fire, as I knew he would. At a higher elevation from where I stood, the bones of Kaya’s ancestors awaited consecration. Many miles away, Kaya’s bones also waited.
And then I was dancing. Something in the air—maybe smoke, maybe gold—compelled me to move. There, in the desert, in the daylight, all by myself, with no music, I danced. So Kaya’s spirit would find peace, I danced. So we would all be kinder, more accepting of our differences, and of our own faults, I danced. So we would not just destroy each other, but instead open our eyes to the miracle of being alive, of being so similar, even in our suffering, I danced. The smoke and the fire and the blood and the light were all in my body, and I lifted my arms to the sky with grief and with joy. I felt that I was drawing rings around my body and then finally shaping them into a world.
30
ON SUNDAY MORNING I WOKE up early, roused by the familiar pounding in my head. I’d been dreaming that I was limping across the desert with a broken foot when a magnificent horse rode up behind me, her flanks tattooed with images of gentle faces both human and animal. I climbed on her back, and we galloped toward the ocean.
Lying in bed, my foot throbbed precisely where it had in the dream, but I knew that it wasn’t broken, only sprained. And I knew that, somehow, I was still being carried. I smiled through the pain.
Seymour darted acrobatically across my window screen. I guess only one superhero remained in my bedroom, and that was okay with me. I dressed and took my pills for the first time in a week, then crossed the hallway to the door I hadn’t opened since July. Karine’s wheelchair still sat empty in the corner of the spare bedroom. I kissed the horse totem in my right hand and then wrapped its string around the wheelchair’s handle.
“You have given me a great gift,” I said, feeling my aunt’s energy swimming through the room. “An awakening. I am ready to accept it now.” The horse swung back and forth slightly on its string, catching the light from the window and casting it upon the shrine of family pictures on the mantel. Soon I would add the painting that Kaya had given me, just as soon as I sketched her body into the scene, so the three of us would be dancing together always.
• • •
“Buenos mañanas,” I said when I walked into the kitchen. My parents weren’t eating. They were too busy drinking coffee and monitoring my every movement. All of Saturday night’s careful apologies about the illicit camping trip and my explanations for Kaya’s accident and my subsequent disappearance had only served to make them more worried about me.
“How are you feeling this morning?” Mom asked.
“I miss Kaya.” She nodded, knowing fully what I felt.
“And physically?” she said, looking me up and down.
“A little achy, but alive,” I said, limping to her so I could kiss the top of her head. “And glad to see you.” I began chopping up peppers for the McDonough Sunday Morning Chili Challenge. If it turned out that habañeros were an offbeat home remedy for MS, I’d be in remission in no time.
“We’re glad to see you too,” said Mom. She had already arranged a visit to Mrs. Johnson that afternoon. We were bringing food and flowers. And memories. Ellen, Kit, and Thomas were going as well. We wanted to tell Kaya’s mom how special her daughter was, and not just because she couldn’t feel pain.
“Remember, baby,” Dad said, “no matter what the doctor says tomorrow morning, we’ll get through it as a family.” Oh, right. My neurologist appointment. How could I have forgotten? Little did Dad know that I’d already been healed by a medicine man with no fancy degrees on his wall. He lived in the wild and had no prescription pad beyond a pouch of animal totems. Even though he couldn’t eliminate my MS, or whatever I turned out to have, he had made me better. He’d reminded me of who I was beneath my errant DNA. I had a life that transcended my illness. MS. My Salvation.
“I know, Dad,” I said. “It won’t be the end of the world, either way.”
• • •
Thomas and I met at the Psalms airfield before the usual post-church rush. I saw him before he saw me. He didn’t wear a hoodie, so I could see that his face was grave and lost in thought as he tinke
red with a burner. But he brightened the moment our eyes met. Circle home, Lo.
“I missed you,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder.
“I missed you too.” When we finally withdrew from our embrace, we both had to wipe away tears. We were together, but Kaya was still gone.
“Are your symptoms . . . ?” he said.
I nodded. “And you . . . ?”
“My memories are back,” he said. “But they feel a little different now. More like shadows of the real thing.”
I squeezed him tight. “That’s good,” I said. “Shadows mean the sun is shining.”
“Consuelo, I’ve seen . . . and done . . . many horrible things. I’m afraid you only know a fraction. Things as bad as what happened on Friday night. Though in some ways that was more brutal because I’d let myself care. Deeply. But now. . . . Now I think I can mourn without reliving the trauma. It hurts—it hurts bad—but it’s not crippling, you know? Because of this week, I don’t feel as separated from my inborn nature, and I feel this sense of self and strength rising to help me. Does that sound foolish? Do you know what I mean?”
“I do. And I feel the same thing.” Thomas pulled away slightly and tilted my chin in his fingers, gazing into my green eyes that might one day go blind again. I would remember every detail of his face.
“And I think,” he said, “that I can also . . . feel love again . . . especially now that I have you.”
“What are you saying?” I knew exactly what he was saying, but I wanted to hear the words.
“I love you, Lo.” The happiness that swelled inside my body at that moment dwarfed any pain I could ever feel.
“I love you too, Thomas.” I think from the moment I’d seen him standing at the Agua wishing well, I’d loved him. And each little glimpse of his soul since then had only made me fall deeper. He was a poem that spoke to me. He was a song. We stood there kissing as the morning breeze tumbled over us and the blue sky became our own private vault of atmosphere, keeping us safe.
The Way We Bared Our Souls Page 21