Rosa Jordan - The Woman She Was

The view from the balcony was idyllic. The forest-and-fern-covered slope fell away to a stream with small waterfalls dropping from one bath-sized pool to the next. A steep narrow stairway led partway down, a stairway not fastened to the deck but leaning against it; built, she knew, to provide easy access to the stream for drinking water and bathing—yet movable, so that if danger threatened from that direction, it could be pushed away in an instant.

There was a flash of lightning followed by a thunderclap so close that she nearly jumped out of her skin. Rain, which until then had been scattered drops, came down in a gush. Celia dived inside the house and stood there laughing, breathless. All I need is time, she thought. If I can stay here long enough, it will all come together; I know it will.

As her eyes adjusted to the murky light of the kitchen, she saw that her sneakers had left muddy tracks across the rough wooden floor. Celia pulled off her shoes and socks and walked barefoot to the hut’s one other room.

The bedroom was dark. The only light came from the kitchen, which itself was dim with the big wall flap closed. The bedroom would not have been dark if the wooden flaps on each of three walls had not been closed. Had they been propped open, awning style, as they were designed, the effect would have been that of an unwalled tree house.

The room held only a double bed—a bed that, with two people curled tightly together, would not have seemed small. She crouched next to the bed and, pushing back the plastic covering it, stroked the coarse off-white sheet. A musty scent filled her nostrils, but it was overridden by another, more animal smell: that of the two warm bodies who had shared this intimate space.

“Forty-five years ago you were here,” she whispered and waited for whatever it was she needed to know about forty-five years ago and now.

Out in the kitchen, she heard the flap lift and the rushing sound of rain driven by wind. The sound persisted for a few seconds. The person entering was looking, as she had looked, for something to prop it open. Finding nothing, the flap closed again, shutting out the wind and darkening the room. Celia waited for the sound of footsteps, but there were none. For a moment she did not move, but remained on her knees, clutching the rough-woven sheet. She tried to stay where she was, who she was. It was no use.

She rose and walked to the door of the bedroom. He was kneeling, unlacing a boot. He pulled it off and, one white foot bare and gleaming, went to work on the second boot. It and the sock were sopping wet, as if he had walked through the creek or stepped in a puddle. He sat down like a child and grasped the boot with both hands to wiggle it off his foot.

As it slid free his eyes flickered to his left, to where she stood, then travelled slowly upward from her feet to her face. For several seconds he sat completely motionless, boot and sock suspended in mid-air, dripping. Then, with extreme quietness, he set the boot on the floor. He dropped the sock beside it and stood up.

Celia moved to him and with her sleeve blotted the wetness from his forehead. She ran her hands down the sides of his face, wiping away droplets of rain clinging to his beard. Her fingers moved lower to undo the buttons of his shirt. It was very wet.

She smiled up at his surprise. You expected me to be at the hospital or meeting with my commanders. But I am here. We are alone. No one, friend or foe, is coming through that rain. It is a torrent, a wall. We are inside a fortress made of water.

She turned and walked into the bedroom. Although she could not hear his bare feet moving silently behind her, she knew he was there. At the bed she paused and waited for him to grasp what her body was telling him. My decision, your command; take it, feel your power. It means nothing to me.

His fingers, light as feathers, stroked down her arms. She unbuttoned her shirt and he peeled it back over her shoulders. When she started unzipping her jeans his hands left her shoulders. She knew without turning around that he was doing the same.

Her jeans were tight. She got them and the panties only to her hips, then sat down on the bed to wiggle them off. He knelt on the floor, took each pant leg in turn, and pulled until her legs were free and bare.

They did not stare at each other; little good it would have done anyway in the shuttered, storm-darkened room. It was all by feel. When his damp, warm-skinned weight lay full against her, it was wonderful soundless as it always is, and swift as it must be. But too quick, oh! She bit her lip to keep from crying out, knowing that he would not, had never, left her like this.

She felt the discipline of his body as it resisted the urge to melt into her own heat, maintaining the rhythm until she came, gasping. Almost immediately she pushed to roll him off her. He clasped her shoulders, resisting.

Why do you always do that? She pushed again. He gave way to the pressure and rolled onto his back. In the same motion she rolled on top of him, felt his body shudder and relax.

See? This is what you need, as much or more than the sex; your back protected by the bed, the floor, the earth itself, my body a shield against what might come at you front on—my body and the rain, which for this moment in time, guards us both.

They slept.

CELIA could not have said whether she felt the man’s body beneath her first, or first opened her eyes to the darkened room. She took it that she was in some kind of hallucination, but the physical reality of the body, its musky maleness, caused her to hold her breath in terror. Who was this person? Who was she? Where was she?

The where answered itself first, as she recognized not so much the room as the sound of the rain. It had slackened some but was still pelting down. Without moving her head, for fear of disturbing she knew not who, her eyes roved frantically, looking for clues as to whether this was or was not a hallucination.

The man, whose hands rested lightly on the small of her back, must have sensed her wakefulness because he slid them higher and tightened his embrace. The movement panicked Celia. As swift as a bird taking wing, she was off of him and into a sitting position on the side of the bed. She would have been gone entirely, with or without her clothes—probably without because she had not yet figured out where they were. But his movement was almost as quick as hers, quick enough to catch her by the wrist.

“Hey!” he said softly. “Don’t go.”

Celia sat, trembling. “Who are you?”

“ Now you ask,” he said in a teasing voice. “I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me.”

Then something, perhaps tension in the wrist he was holding, must have caused him to realize how frightened she was. He immediately released her, rose from the bed, and reached for his pants. She looked for her own, but he was between her and them, between her and the door. She remained perched on the side of the bed. His pants were at her feet. When he picked them up, they brushed against her leg.

“Your clothes are soaking wet!” she said in surprise.

“Well, yeah. It’s raining out there.” He glanced around, perhaps looking for his underpants. Not seeing them, he pulled on his jeans.

“Is that where you came from? Out there?” she whispered.

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that his crotch was no more than a foot from her face, he unselfconsciously slipped his hand between penis and pants to avoid pinching as he pulled up the zipper. “Well, yeah. I work here. Where did you come from?”

Perhaps he sensed that his standing tall, quizzing her like that, was increasing her fear because he sat down cross-legged on the floor, looked up at her, and asked in soft-voiced wonder, “And why did you come to me the way you did?”