Ширли Мерфи - The Grass Tower

Ninea, catching Bethany’s thought, turned abruptly, stared at her unhappily for a minute, then picked up Grandfather’s bag and started for the stairs.

Alarmed, Bethany grabbed her own bag and went after her, trying to know what Ninea was thinking; but Ninea’s mind was closed.

They were in Ninea’s room at last; the red spread was folded down and the sheets turned back on two sides so that Bethany knew she was to sleep here. What had bothered Ninea? “Don’t you want to go home with us, at least for a little while?” And the hurt in Bethany’s voice was enough to turn Ninea away from the mirror and make her reach out to Bethany.

“I don’t know if she’ll let me, I don’t know—” and there was more to it than that muffled in her mind.

“You don’t know if you want to.” Bethany said slowly. She held Ninea away and looked at her. “You don’t— You don’t know how you feel really. Grandfather said it would be like this. But won’t she let you if you want to? Grandfather should have just as much say about it.”

“He should have more say. It wasn’t his fault we were separated.”

It wasn’t his fault, they thought together, then grinned at each other.

Chapter 12

They fled at last, having unpacked Bethany’s few things, leaving their elders, flew out into the hot twilight street, running; Ninea led her down the crowded streets where people were gathered laughing, flirting, playing little radios, happy after the day’s work. They loitered in the streets until the night began to come down in earnest, then home, and for several mornings they were out early, almost as if, if they kept exploring, they would not have to come to grips with the vagrant unease that lay between them. Perhaps each one did not feel quite whole so close to the other, and each feared that silent, introspective mood that would magnify this.

They walked among the ramshackle houses, the boys staring in disbelief at their twinness, and through the open market stalls past bloody, fly-covered carcasses hanging. They shopped for clothes, and one day they sat in the sun in the plaza Bethany remembered, beside the fountain, where life seemed to have frozen into one everlasting instant; old men slept leaning against the raised side of the fountain, old women drowsed with baby carriages, dogs lay unmoving. Then a group of children burst from a side street, exploded into the plaza shouting, and a flock of black, ugly birds as large as eagles rose noisily from the rooftops. “Vultures,” Ninea said. “Come on.” She swept Bethany away through the alley beside Corrinne’s little room, not stopping, and out the other end onto a stone plaza overlooking a harbor where dozens of small boats were unloading papaya and mangoes and plantain, golden piles of plantain like huge bananas. The bay or the boats or perhaps the city around them smelled strong and, to Bethany, unpleasant, as if something was fermenting. There were dozens of vultures on the rusting tin rooftops, and some men in a boat were cooking their meal over a charcoal brazier. Laundry hung above the boat cabins, dangling between crates of chickens, old chairs, and small naked children. Small naked children were everywhere, children and mangy-looking dogs, and the older boys that frightened Bethany, but, “Keep your mouth shut, don’t let them hear you talk and they won’t pay any attention to you,” Ninea said, softly in English, adding something louder in Spanish for the benefit of the boys; and Bethany realized that while Ninea thought in English most of the time, she could just as well think in Spanish. “You can teach me! All you have to do is think the words and a meaning, and—”

They tried it, laughing. Maranon, Ninea thought.

“Maranon!” And the picture of the crowded slum was clear.

Cabeza, and Ninea thought of her head.

“Cabeza!” Then, “Pajaro!” Bethany cried, seeing the great birds, and little birds, fluttering. “Somos hermanas.” We are sisters. She took the accents and definitions so quickly from Ninea that they became breathless with it.

They went arm in arm through the ruins of a building that was being torn down, broken bricks and pieces of plumbing and snakelike bits of wire lying in muddy puddles jeweled with fallen leaves and blossoms from the red flowering trees that grew along the sidewalk. The few ragged, partially standing walls had sprouted with the seedlings of trees, and with weeds. Then they left the rubble for a quiet street of private houses with deep inner patios, and entered the little museum that stood among them, a museum sheltered by the largest trees of all. The small verandahed building stood deep in shade; its inner patios were cool and pleasant with potted flowers and strange stone statues of old gods that looked down at them enigmatically, square, deep-eyed figures. And in the flashing glass cases their own two reflections stared at them like some prophesy of twins long trapped in the cases. “I used to see two,” Ninea said. “I used to stand here like this and see two of us looking back.” The thought brought shivers to Bethany’s spine.

In the cases were clay animals in the shapes of bowls and pitchers, an anteater with a pouring spout for its mouth, frog bowls with frogs for handles. And in the center of the room stood the case of golden pendants. There were eagles similar to theirs, but not like them, and crocodiles and small stocky men all of gold. Around them an aura of magic seemed to cling, so that Bethany felt perhaps the people who had made them still hovered close by. Somewhere, in some other dimension, could these people still live and move here among their idols and amulets?

Somewhere, Ninea thought. Maybe. Or maybe they will rise if you say the right words, maybe they’ll come back like zombies do when voodoo brings the dead to life.

Bethany stared at her.

“The voodoo sorcerers make the dead rise, they bring them from the grave and make them live again.”

“You can’t believe that. You can’t believe in that kind of thing!”

“You can’t help but believe when you hear the stories, the voodoo stories.”

“They’re only stories!”

“No they’re not. There are painted gourds and bells and iron symbols they use in the rituals at night, and the Serpent—”

Bethany ripped away from her, out the door and into the glaring hot street; the sun hit her in the face and she was nearly blinded by it.

They kill chickens for sacrifice and they bring the dead from the grave! Ninea’s thoughts were fierce. Bethany felt sick.

Then she turned suddenly, to stare back toward the museum. Why should she run from Ninea? Why should she let Ninea frighten her! It was not because Ninea talked about such things, it was that she lusted after them, it was the feel of lust that sickened Bethany, a repulsion that made her shiver. She thought stubbornly of Ninea, and when she could feel her there, close, she thought deliberately of goodness, of strength and brightness, pushing down the ugliness of Ninea’s thoughts. She thought of love between people, of kindness, and she made her thoughts as fierce as Ninea’s own. She imagined a towering brightness forcing the darkness back: and slowly she began to drive back Ninea’s determination. She visualized a great golden light dwarfing and melting black-robed figures that genuflected before witch fires. She had no idea where she got the images, but she could feel her own strength building in an entirely new way. The light was like music now, flowing music moving all around them; she held it with all her strength, held Ninea, and she was touching something, drawing something to them. She tried to imagine the brilliance touching those dark moments in the seances, washing clean the darkness there, and for a moment she felt Ninea’s rage. Then at last she felt Ninea’s wonder—at her, at herself, Bethany. And wonder at the bright power she had drawn to them.