Dark Plums (29 page)

When she rubbed her eyes, he disappeared. All she saw were waves of air rising around her, but still she heard his voice mingling with other voices, enticing her. Then again she seemed to see the shadowy form of her mother beneath some rocks. Elena smiled in that strange way, with the glimmer of satisfaction that Adrianne had seen for the blink of an eye during that last night. “
I knew about Gerald
,” her mother whispered inside the wind. “
I knew a lot about you. When I gaze off, I see things beneath the surface. You have lived out my secret dreams, and now this heat will get you and you'll die
.”

Her mother was rocking a tiny carcass against her breasts.

Adrianne stood up. Through her fear, she knew she had to stay awake. The voices fused, pulling her in different directions. “
Come with me … with me
,” they all echoed around her. Were they coming from inside her brain? The wind intensified, blowing branches of the sparse desert brush. She felt them flow through her with the wind, fill her, and then pass beyond.

Finally, she was empty, and in spite of the heat she shivered as she had the night before underneath the blankets.

“
Not yet to die, meine liebchen. Not to die. Not to die
.”

The ring with the red and blue stones flashed.

Just then she heard a bird's cawing. She blinked and saw a vulture circling overhead. Exerting all her will, she forced herself to run. Her legs felt like tree trunks. Her full breasts ached as they bounced against her. Gasping for breath, she made herself keep running. The murmur of voices continued around her. With a sudden gust the wind blew off her hat, rolling it against a bush. Adrianne retrieved it. Prickly plants hurt her skin. The sky was radiant blue. The wind had died down, and she felt strangely light. A fly landed on her arm. When she looked up, she saw that the vulture was circling lower. She knew she had to keep on walking, walking. Her ankles were covered with scratches and her exposed skin had turned bright red.

Keep on moving, moving.

Finally, she saw the house. As soon as she walked inside, she collapsed on the cool tile floor.

Hours later she awakened in semi-darkness. Then again she fell into a feverish sleep.

She dreamed that she was making love. A sea wind billowed in through white curtains as she and the young man, her lover, fused in love. His eyes were the same deep blue as hers. His face and body were beautiful to her. With magical hands, he caressed her all over, her breasts, her belly, her cunt, until she felt as if flames were licking her. His cock filled her, as if it were a soft bright flame unfolding its petals through her torso and limbs. She and her lover pressed tight against each other, smooth and slippery with sweat. Flashing light energy flowed between them, opening up her body and mind, as they floated through space. On her right middle finger gleamed a ring with red and blue stones, like the one she had seen Max wearing in her desert vision. Then she fell through darkness, awakening with a jolt, as one of her legs jerked in a spasm.

For a moment she did not know where she was or even who she was. Slowly the room spun into focus, and she realized she was lying on Manuel's bed. At that moment he walked in the bedroom door and looked at her with concern.

“At last you're awake,” he said. “I was worried. You were burning with fever.”

He put a glass of water to her lips, and she sipped a little of it. Although she was sweating, chills swept through her. He ran a lukewarm bath for her in which she soaked for a long time. Then she rested a while longer.

“You need to be more careful,” Manuel said at dinner. “The desert and the heat can kill you.”

She told him about her visions that morning.

Manuel said, “I should have warned you. You shouldn't wander alone here. This land has a special kind of power. I want you to show me where this happened.”

After they had eaten, they walked outside, accompanied by his sheep dog which bounded back and forth. When Adrianne showed him the place where she'd had her visions, she was filled with a sense of unease. She told him a little about her life and about the recent visit
with her mother. Although he didn't probe, she had a sense he grasped far more than she told him. She talked about how she was now going to study music in California.

While they walked, the murmur of voices sounded again. This time she let the voices pass through her, not clinging to them. That way they had no power. She felt the ground beneath her feet and the cool air around her.

Swiftly, the sun sank beneath the horizon, suffusing the sky with a vivid rose light. It grew dark, and the first stars appeared. A coyote howled. She shivered inside Manuel's leather jacket and walked faster to keep up with him. She felt herself changing as she stepped across the land, which now gleamed ghostly white in the light of the rising moon. She felt herself changing, changing. The stars looked especially large and clear. The old self was slipping away like a skin being shed, and this frightened her. She wanted to hold on to her old self, but the immensity of the surrounding land and sky somehow forced her to let it go.

“Sometimes I think God is dreaming us, and we are dreaming our lives,” he said in his deep voice. “What we take in through our five senses is like a dream. God is this desert. We're like grains of sand or like the stars.”

His words sank into her mind.

“When we die,” he continued, “We fade the way shadows fade when the sun goes down.” He was silent for a moment. Then his voice took on a different tone as he asked, “Do you wonder how I found you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“After your car broke down, you got scared with that killing heat and your lack of water. You weren't ready to die. The feeling you sent was so strong, I picked it up like radar. So I got in my truck and drove until I found you.”

“I see,” she said, pondering his words. On and on they walked. “It's so quiet,” she murmured.

“Words can get in the way. They often lie.” His presence strengthened her. Reaching for her hand, he held it for a moment in his warm grip.

Rays of golden purple light from the evening sky enveloped
them, and inside the light she felt safe. She felt, too, as if an enormous burden were being lifted from her. They continued walking in silence until they reached his house again, brilliant underneath the light of the moon and stars.

The next morning they drove to the gas station. Manuel introduced her to his son Pablo, a slender young man whose eyes were almost pure black.

“I sealed up the radiator,” said Pablo. “I also put a new hose on because the old one looked worn-out. You're lucky the engine's okay.”

She thanked him and paid the bill. Manuel took her suitcase out of the pickup and put it into her car.

“Hey, Dad, take a look at your carburetor,” cautioned Pablo, peering inside the hood of Manuel's truck. “Come and take a look.”

“Goodbye, Manuel. Thank you for everything,” she said.

He reached into his shirt pocket and handed something to her. It was an antique silver ring set with two small stones, one a deep rich red and the other dark blue. The stones glimmered, just as they had in her dream.

“This ring came down to my wife through her family,” Manuel said. “Somehow I think you're meant to have it.

“Oh, Manuel,” she said. “It's so beautiful.”

“The silver needs polishing. The stones are sapphire and ruby.”

When she slipped the ring on her middle finger, it fit perfectly.

“I'll think of you when I wear it.”

“Think of the desert,” he said. “Don't let anything drive you
loca
, you hear?”

She smiled and shook his hand. Then he went over to his truck to look at the carburetor. When she started up the engine he tipped his sombrero, and she waved goodbye.

She drove on and on. Towards afternoon the wind died down completely. Nothing stirred. The sun was brilliant. Far off in the distance a vulture soared. When she glanced at her ring, the stones flashed in the light. As she drove, she felt as if she were one with her body, with the moving car, with the earth, the sky, and the flying bird.

 

Born Paula Cronbach in 1939 to a family of German Jews with hidden Sephardic origins, María Espinosa's mother's family lived in Spain until the 18th century. They concealed their Jewish identity until the family finally made their way to Brussels, where they could openly practice their religion. From there they moved to Eastern Europe, and finally to the United States.

Espinosa grew up in Long Island, the child of a sculptor father and a poet mother. She attended Harvard and Columbia Universities and received a MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She met and married her first husband, Chilean writer Mario Espinosa Wellmann while living in Paris. In 1978 she married Walter Selig, who had fled Nazi Germany as a child to grow up on an Israeli kibbutz.

Espinosa has taught at New College of California, City College of San Franciso and elsewhere. She is the author of the novels
Longing
(Arte Público, 1995; Wings Press ebook 2011) and
Dark Plums
(Arte Público, 1995; Wings Press ebook 2011), and
Incognito: The Journey of a Secret Jew
(Wings Press, 2002; ebook 2011), and
Dying Unfinished
(Wings Press, 2009; ebook 2011).
Longing
received the American Book Award in 1996, and has been translated into Greek;
Dying Unfinished
received the PEN Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence in 2010. Espinosa is also the author of two books of poetry,
Night Music
and
Love Feelings.
She translated George Sand's novel,
Lélia,
which was published by the Indiana University Press.

Espinosa's poetry, articles, translations, and short fiction have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals, including
Anthologies of Underground Poetry,
edited by Herman Berlandt,
In other Words: Literature by Latinas of the United States,
edited by Roberta Fernández, and
George Sand's Ma Vie,
edited by Thelma Jurgrau. An interesting midnight interview with the Israeli writer, Amos Oz, appeared in
Three Penny Review.

For more complete biographical information, go to:
www.wingspress.com
or
www.mariaespinosa.com

Some years ago when María Espinosa was still my student, she presented me with a novel, entitled
Longing,
she had written about her eccentric husband from Chile, Antonio, in the book. The narrative was so alive and convincing, it sounded more like a slice of life, a document. A number of other novels followed, until the present one,
Dying Unfinished,
which takes up the main characters of
Longing,
who are now seen from a distance of many years. The first novel was a brave act of defiance because it involved her family. Now most have disappeared, and the present novel is a memorial, a work of devotion towards mother, father, husband, daughter, brothers, and related lovers and friends. It is a tableau of complicated relations in which the mother is the central figure, and Rosa the daughter, still plays the role of observer, narrator, and actor in the story. Once more Espinosa shows her skill in bringing to life and literature her story, in a very unusual family novel. This time it's not scandal, but the dual points of view of mother and daughter that make it live. My advice to readers is to read them both, to complete this dual tableau which makes fascinating open-ended reading.

—Nanos Valaoritis, author of Pan Daimonium, My Afterlife Guaranteed; editor of An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry

Espinosa presents the themes of alienation and incompleteness in alternating sequences between Eleanor, an artistic-minded, assimilated Jew from a wealthy but politically progressive family and her equally artistic daughter, Rosa. Eleanor is constantly torn between her desire for her dream of freedom and the structures that confine and define her to the world…. As with the unnamed hustler in John Rechy's
City of Night,
Eleanor seeks her essence in a series of anonymous sexual encounters. Sex, the most primal currency of communication, becomes her nexus to the natural world of desire, dreams, and identity….
Dying Unfinished
is more than a fascinating portrait of creative souls alienated in a materialistic world; it is a brilliant discourse in the search for the language of silence and otherness with the human soul.

—Rosa Martha Villarreal, author of The Stillness of Love and Exile, Chronicles of Air and Dreams, and Doctor Magdalena

María Espinosa's
Dying Unfinished
is not a novel. It is a long poem of great lyrical beauty, a deftly-written tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, told in the intimate voices of Eleanor and Rosa, a mother once a daughter and a daughter now also a mother. Their stories resonate in the heart of every daughter who seeks her self-realization as an entity separate from her mother, and of every mother who fiercely protects her autonomy from family demands. Carving an identity from damaged tissue, from scars and wounds left us by the most significant and complex relationship in our lives requires analytical and surgical precision but also compassion and the strength of convictions. To confront memory, that merciless, relentless accountant, who always arrives with the books of rancor, regret and sorrow neatly tucked under her arms, demands an enormous amount of courage. Elusive for Eleanor till the end of her days, these are the lessons of the heart Rosa learns, for it isn't until the fluid connectedness of mind and spirit is restored and the essence of dreams recovered that forgiveness of self and others is possible. Bravo! Gracias, María.