The United States of Us

by Kate Sundara

  This summer gone was like the summer of ‘75, Grandpa – the last you ever saw – when you took me to see the world raining purple in the field of jacaranda trees. The air was dancing with pollen and blossom, just the same, it stuck to me. I went to the lake beyond where the wild horses graze, the secret place through the willow trees, to wash away sweat and factory dust too, get cool. As I came up from under the water there the man was again, sitting on the rocks, with that grin. He was kind and charming, made me laugh, made me feel special. I got to liking him. It felt good having someone really see me, not like at home – Pa not really knowing if I’m there or not. His name is José, he’s Spanish, a musician. Travelled the whole world over, like the Water Boys from your story, opening my eyes wide to all things new. I was with him every day, all summer long, him singing me songs by the lake, under the willows. When he said to come to California, I came.

  Here in California my belly’s filling with fear and secrets. José’s like a tree in fall when all the leaves float off it. I think Coyote got inside him just like he got inside of Pa, after Mama died, when Coyote slipped inside him through a bottle, and he could never close it up since. José’s a two spirits man. He got us kicked out of the motel for acting crazy. Now the money’s gone and he never picks up his guitar. I’ve got something inside me too and it’s growing. I’m not like Sacajawea, sixteen with her baby. I try to be strong like her but I’m alone even when I’m with him and I’m scared.

  I had pains but he ignored me so I went to the clinic. The lady there asked me, how are you to keep a baby without two dimes to rub together, no steady place to live? You don’t use protection? Protection? Who’s the father? I don’t know who José is. Elders say if father’s unknown then it’s Coyote’s but I won’t let it be Coyote’s. Coyote done enough. Some people here say I should give it away, but I don’t want to. I wish you were still here.

  * * *

  A silver lining in the madness is that Ruth’s talking to Mia again, even if the air between them still feels a little frosty.

  ‘Nothing like a bombshell to break the ice,’ jests Ruth, wryly.

  Mia breathes a laugh, wanting the ice to melt completely. She needs her friend back.

  ‘Rosa’s Zak’s mom? His birth-mom…?’ Ruth’s as shocked as Mia was. She rests down the journal containing the letter. They’re sat on the mountain-face at Crystal Falls.

  ‘Turn the page,’ says Mia. There’s a photocopy of Zak’s adoption certificate and a letter from the Department of Native Affairs.

  ‘That’s Zak’s birthday alright,’ says Ruth, ‘I remember last year’s saga, with Neve…’ She gazes down at the documents.

  ‘Zak was part of a government adoption programme in the seventies: Indian kids sent to white families. A stolen generation.’

  Ruth stares out across the valley, engulfed by that same great cloud Mia’s been in all day. ‘Messed up,’ she whispers in disbelief. ‘Does Zak know about her?’

  ‘Not even Rosa knows that. Does he know he’s adopted? He sure never mentioned it. I was always curious about his origins – of course, he never gave me any insight when I asked him. But Zak and Rosa, Ruth – can you see the resemblance…? She always seemed so familiar to me.’

  ‘He must know; it’s too much a coincidence him being here, he was raised in New Mexico!’

  ‘Right. My guess is he settled here because he wanted to get closer to his roots, do some digging. Rosa’s known who I am pretty much since she met me – my connection to Zak – she would’ve seen us around together. Plus it was way easier for her to research him with Zak being in the band.’

  ‘The internet.’

  ‘Amongst other means. You know what else is bizarre? Before I came out here, months ago, Zak emailed me a photo of Rosa on the street, said she was just part of a project. Even if Zak knows he’s adopted and traced his roots back to here, I’m almost certain he doesn’t know of his relationship to Rosa.’

  ‘What’s she going to do now? Why now?’

  ‘Rosa was diagnosed with lung cancer a few months back. She quit tobacco. She’s going to be okay. Nowadays she puffs away on this herbal stuff, nothing addictive about it, aside from the action of holding her pipe to her lips. She has this theory, she thinks her illness manifested from not vocalising her truth about Zak for all those years. That smoking was the secondary cause. Crazy as that may sound, it pushed her to get searching for her son.’

  ‘So what about his birth father, this José guy?’

  ‘He spent a few years in Italy working on the docks. When Rosa told me that I wondered if that’s why Zak was in Italy, where we met. Maybe he was looking for family there.’

  ‘It’s plausible, I guess.’

  ‘José sounds just like Zak. The mood swings…?’

  ‘I found packets of sealed medication in Zak’s drawer when I picked up my passport. I researched the combination – they’re drugs prescribed for bipolar disorder. Manic depression. Extreme highs and lows. On top of the world one moment, can’t see the point in living the next. All of the medication was unopened. He hasn’t been taking it. Here…’ Mia unfolds a print-out, hands it over to Ruth, who reads from the list:

  ‘The highs: excessive energy, creative spurts, racing thoughts, supreme confidence in own powers and abilities, living in fantasies. The lows: impenetrable sadness, anxiety, despair, irritation, distractedness, loss of appetite, promiscuity, depen- dency on drugs, poor judgement, paranoia, psychosis, becoming enraged when challenged, saying strange nonsensical things –’

  ‘Feeling so damn low you can’t drag yourself out of bed’, adds Mia. ‘His moods sky-rocket and plummet. Our summer romance, Ruthie – that one day on the island – we got together when he was soaring.’

  Now the girls’ silence is one of rumination rather than hostility.

  ‘Do you think Zak’s biological father had the same condition?’ asks Ruth. ‘I mean, from what Rosa writes in her letter, their behaviour follows a similar course.’

  ‘It seems so. Although it’s not always passed on, I researched it. Rosa named Zak Jacaranda after the trees that blossomed close to the rez. Those trees thrived in a place they’re not expected to – the climate is all wrong – yet they defied their DNA. Rosa’s hope was that Zak would be like them. She believes in magic. Her grandfather taught her to see it, to hold onto it – at least Zak’s inherited that too. When I called in to see her last night, she clocked that prescription on the back of my hand… she put two and two together. No wonder she was acting so antsy. She couldn’t keep it in any more, she needed to talk, understandably. It’s all in her journal here, dozens of letters she wrote to her grandfather after he died. A whole series explaining everything.’

  ‘Why would she give you such personal things?’

  ‘I think she wants my help.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m not sure, she hasn’t asked me yet.’

  The girls sit wordless, zephyr rustling through the trees.

  ‘You hear that?’ whispers Ruth. A distant yipping rides the wind.

  They listen.

  ‘Do you know the local legends of Coyote?’ enquires Mia.

  Ruth shrugs. ‘You know me. I see animals in the scientific sense.’

  ‘Rosa says Coyote’s a shape-shifter, he can morph into anything. Almost every time I go to Zak’s, there’s some dark creature outside his house, some dog, cat or raven.’ Creatures who cast the shadow of a man… she doesn’t mention that part to Ruth, doesn’t want to tackle metaphysics.

  ‘So what are you saying? You think Coyote’s hanging around Zak’s place turning himself into a bunch of different animals? C’mon, Mia, that’s a little out-there. It’s impossible. Those are just stories.’

  ‘To our thinking, yeah!’

  ‘They’ve set off your imagination.’

  A great long howl cuts through the breeze. Ruth looks at Mia ominously then shivers and wraps her arms around herself.

  ‘Before we westerners came along tha
t’s what they would’ve believed – that’s what Rosa’s elders believed. That Coyote could get inside somebody.’

  ‘Then Coyote’s run amok in this valley. Look at some of those people at the shelter.’

  ‘Ruth, if it’s not my place to help Zak, then who will? He tries to self-medicate with weed instead of the drugs he’s been prescribed, but that makes him sketchy and paranoid. There must be a better way. Thing is, if this illness means you’re that detached from reality, then how can you see you need proper help? The Mach Band… I don’t believe it’s called that for no reason. Those light to dark references, the two extremes. Who thought of the band name? Who comes up with almost all their songs? Zak’s a whizz; he uses his depression for his art, his blessing’s his curse. And if you had a condition that meant half the time you were flying high on life would you want that to stop? Especially if you’re in a creative field. Winston Churchill called his depression his ‘black dog’ and he was a powerhouse. Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Hemingway, Marilyn Monroe – creative geniuses, great writers, poets, artists. According to the internet, they all lived with the same disorder. Hans Christian Anderson, Spike Milligan – what are they famous for? Children’s stories – fairytales!’

  ‘It’s a fine line between madness and genius.’

  ‘But if you can use that to your advantage, to create magic…’

  A gust of wind and the girls pull their clothes tighter around themselves.

  ‘Bipolar: You stick a label on it, and so? Am I still angry with Zak? Can I be? Do I feel sorry for him? Does it account for all of his behaviour or is some of that his underlying personality? Where does the person stop and the disorder begin? Rosa talked about forgiveness. I asked her how you can forgive someone if they’re not even sorry? But how can you blame them if they don’t know what they’re doing? If Zak’s not responsible for his actions that means there was only one of us in this ‘relationship’ – me! Surely that makes me the crazy one! If I’d known the rules from the start, I’d have understood more, I’d have done everything differently.’

  ‘C’mon, if you’d known from the start, would you even have come out here? Zak’s gotta take responsibility, I don’t care what he’s got, it’s no excuse for treating you the way he has.’

  ‘So what now? I turn my back, give up on him?’

  ‘What else can you do? You think he’s going to let you save him? Zak has family.’

  ‘More than he knows…’ Both girls look down at Rosa’s book. ‘I have to help, Ruthie. It’s like I’m being called to. I’m the link between Zak and Rosa. Maybe my coming out here wasn’t all a big mistake. Maybe Rosa’s right – everything is part of a greater plan.’

  Ruth doesn’t refute it, just sits in contemplation.

  ‘If someone’s ill,’ says Mia, ‘Take lung disease – people are compassionate and try to help you. Why should it be different with an illness of the mind? No-one asks for that either. But it is different, isn’t it? People make faces or cross the street and you can understand why because that sort of behaviour can be frightening. But it could happen to anyone couldn’t it. Who doesn’t have mental health issues? We’re all mad to some degree. In my infatuation, I didn’t want to see Zak’s madness. That was the madness in me.’

  Mia replays her day with Zak on the island, when they walked beneath the canopy, he on the shadow-line between dark and light. She’d been enchanted by his unique beauty, now traceable to his Native American-Spanish roots. She’d seen a celestial breeze around him, stars dancing in his hair, the mysteries of the oceans in the depths of his eyes. It is clear to her now that she didn’t see him as he is, but how she dreamt him to be.

  ‘Lunatics and romantics gaze up at the same moon,’ says Mia.

  Ruth nods. ‘Two types of crazy, you mean?’

  What she means is, who’s to tell apart the madness of minds enchanted?

  Different diagnosis, yet united in state.

  * * *

  Mia and Rosa walk together through the dawn, pausing upon reaching Zak’s place. Rosa insisted it’s the best time to do this – dawn the most magical time, when anything is possible. She didn’t want Mia walking here alone. Not with that assailant still on the loose.

  ‘You’re certain this is what you want?’ checks Mia. ‘For me to tell Zak about you?’

  Rosa nods. ‘This is it. Now or never.’

  ‘I’ll come by later.’

  They hold each other’s gaze.

  ‘You’re sure you have everything you need? My journal, the letters…’

  Mia touches her bag. ‘It’s all in here…’ Rosa considers her.

  ‘Thank you, Mia…’

  Together they take a deep breath, then Mia turns and walks towards Zak’s house.

  It’s the same scene as the other day, and yet entirely different. Zak still lying on the futon, in the same place, the same clothes. It’s Mia’s perspective that’s at an opposite. The other day she came at dusk, now she comes at dawn, but it’s not the time of day that’s changed the way she sees it. When she stood here before, knowing nothing, her empti- ness made her cold and barren. Now she embodies a world of truth, which thaws and fills her with its heat. She stands in the same spot she stood in all her armour, where she closed herself off and chilled her humid heart to guard it. But now her heart is open, enlightened by understanding, she’s strong in herself, dauntless, courageous, and needs no protection.

  How long has he been sleeping here, fully-dressed and comatose? How long might he be left to deteriorate and fester before anyone other than herself came by? His stubble’s grown out, he looks like he hasn’t moved and the room of chaos smells even staler…

  Last time she saw his lethargy as a personal let-down, but now she knows it’s symptom of his condition that does not discriminate. Last time, darkness crept into the bedroom, now in creeps the light. Last time, she closed the window on the night, now she opens it to let in the day.

  She sees the book he made of them, the one she put down because it scared her – she’s not scared now. Why should she be scared when she’s done no differently: wallowing in the soft dream-realm adoration of someone too hard to love in the flesh? Her sense of fear is replaced with fragility.

  She sees the giant canvas on his wall as if seeing it for the first time, that whirling swirling painted figure was never laughing in ecstasy, as once she thought, but screaming in despair. Colours and contours creating a human roar so raw with emotion that, depending on the light of day, one could see in it both joy and pain. She’s astounded how she never saw so much, so consumed with fractured skies and broken dreams that she never really perceived his suffering. A slave to his own roller-coaster emotions, she can only imagine how exhausting living with his ever-changing self must be. She wants to reach out and touch him, to feel his sleeping softness, to stroke the beauty and the injury of the animal in its cave. She resists, watching the gentle rise and fall of his body, grateful for this restful reprieve.

  Now, through unblinkered eyes, she sees in him the child of a young frightened mother and a troubled father who never held him in his arms. She wants to crawl beneath the covers with him into warm silent nothingness, to abandon all logic, all rightness and wrongness, all the voices of the world, of him, of herself. She wants them to be simple – simpler than children – to meet in a place where there is no thought, no words, no reason, just simple Oneness, peace peace peace.

  A space has opened up inside her of compassion and awareness. She feels beauty in the letting go as she looks to those photos of Freya and jealousy is replaced by sisterhood. It’s so much easier to let go if we are all One. Every angle is altered so it’s the other way around.

  Outside, birds chirp in the trees, waking with the dawn. Mia perches on the edge of his bed, her necklace slipping into her lap. She holds the feather talisman between her thumb and finger. She feels Zak stir too, looks to him as he finally opens his eyes. He sees her sitting there beside him on the futon against the wall, but doesn�
��t look angry – he wears the face of one who’s woken from a deep sleep. He lays watching her, silent, sedate.

  ‘Zak.’

  He has no words until he fully comes to. ‘What’s that?’ he asks groggily, noticing the pendant.

  ‘A gift someone gave me.’

  ‘A guy? I wouldn’t blame you for finding someone new. I’ve been… I’ve been so…’ He is almost teary as he sits up, slowly rubbing his head like he has a terrible headache.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. I understand, or at least I’m starting to. I came to see if you’re alright. And, because I need to ask you…’ As the messenger she’s taking a huge risk, she doesn’t know how much he knows. ‘Zak, did you move to this valley looking for someone?’

  He’s wordless for an eternity, then he slowly nods.

  Mia’s muscles loosen a little. Zak stares ahead of him, dazed.

  ‘I wanted to find her,’ he eventually admits. ‘Everything got in the way.’

  ‘That’s alright,’ Mia tells him. ‘She found you.’

  Zak looks to Mia as, carefully, she reaches into her bag, takes out a piece of paper, passes it to him. He gently accepts it, gingerly unfolds it – a print-out of the photo he took of Rosa months ago. His eyes widen momentarily as he processes the image. ‘No,’ he says and for a dreadful moment Mia’s fear returns – the fear he doesn’t believe what she’s telling him, until he follows it up with, ‘It’s her?’ He sits up properly, studies the picture, wipes his eyes, studies the picture again.

  Mia nods. ‘I never went looking for it, Zak. This story found me, our lives connected.’

  Zak clasps the back of his neck, runs his hand through his raven hair then over his stubble.

  ‘She’s my… biological…?’ His tone is receptive, docile. ‘How? How do you know?’

  ‘We met at the shelter, got to know each other from there. I didn’t find out until just now. She never wanted to let you go. She was so young. Here… you’re bound to have loads of questions. She wrote you… It’s all in here. The whole story.’ Mia pulls Rosa’s journal out of her bag. ‘Take your time. I’ll leave this with you. There’s a lot to take in. But when you’re ready… she said she’d love to meet you. She’ll be waiting… Only if you want to.’