Space Between the Stars (36 page)

I admitted that I resented the years spent chasing my husband around the world to have a relationship. Our marriage was crying out for reciprocal attention and commitment from Carlos. He responded by canceling his commitments and staying home for four months. It was the longest amount of time he had been off the road since we married.

This time allowed Carlos to practice a simple existence completely foreign to our family. Rather than rushing to interviews or band rehearsals, Carlos picked up the children from school, ate meals with us, and experienced our world. He videotaped the children dancing and clowning as they performed for the father they worshipped but were usually waving good-bye to. Through my sessions with the therapist, I faced the realization that I could not live in fear of losing Carlos to another woman, of my life changing, of a loved one dying, or of the unknown: Fear paralyzes. My goal needed to be to live in each moment, forgive the past, and be the best person possible by meditating on God and following my heart. I could not magically or easily transcend the hurt I felt, but somehow I had always known that being in a relationship is work, and that
marriage needs care and the commitment of time, love, and sacrifice.

My parents had weathered their storms. I had heard them argue, but never had been party to significant discussions or turmoil. Perhaps their marriage was different from ours in some way. But I thought not. Their stakes were the same. Perhaps I would always be a romantic. I had fallen so deeply in love with Carlos—without inhibition or insecurity, wearing my love openly for him to see. Our family was sacred to me, and Carlos and I united in maintaining the communion between our children and us. There was nothing that could abolish my commitment to our tree of life.

Our office complex had a large room in the back, where the band rehearsed. One day, before rehearsal began, Carlos stood in the front doorway with Chester, the keyboardist. I watched him from my desk. His black knit cap was pulled low on his forehead, and he looked tall and slim in a black silk shirt, exquisitely handsome, his full lips drawing me to him as he talked to Chester. I felt a familiar spark inside, like I'd felt when we first met and he was all I could think about. It was instant recognition, without words, of something reaching inside to claim my heart. Carlos's innate affirmation of spiritual truth, his dedication to seeking God, made me love him as I had when we first met. I remembered our conversation from a day earlier, when we drove into the city to pick up Stella from school.

“I was so nervous when we first went out,” Carlos had said. “I thought you were so hip and so cool and that I was such a dork. I was careful not to breathe too hard so that my nose wouldn't wheeze.”
I laughed. “Come on,” I said.

“No,” Carlos replied. “I was so scared. Then, later, when I got to know you, I saw you were as dorky as me.”

We looked at each other as Carlos drove past the marina, sailboats bobbing in their slips, joggers huffing along the bay. Just like in 1973, when we met.

“You're so beautiful—your arms, your neck, your hands, your face. I just love everything about you,” he whispered.

I looked over at my husband as he said those words, and I pictured us twenty-three years earlier. Who would have thought he was worried about being cool? The tall, quiet guitar player in sunglasses and full-length snakeskin coat with cowboy boots, gliding across the stage, hitting notes that fell like rain inside my body and awakened the one great love in my life.

The sun was falling across my face, making me glow as he offered me his ardent praise. I smiled. I couldn't help myself. “I adore you,” I said.

Our family was back to a semblance of serenity. The children and I traveled to Montreux, Switzerland, for the annual two-week Jazz Festival, where musicians from around the world performed together and created exciting music by playing cutting-edge jazz and big-band arrangements. Kitsaun and a friend, Aaron Estrada, who was a couple of years older than Salvador and the son of Santana's first road manager, came with us. We hiked the hilly city and took the tram to the Alps, where we gazed over sparkling Lake Geneva. We went to Château de Chillon, an eighteenth-century castle, and walked back to our villa, Stella complaining the whole way that her feet hurt. Jelli rode on my back or on Auntie's, and sang little songs.
Santana arrived and played in the Festival Hall; Van Morrison was the opening act. After the concert, we traveled to the south of France, where the band would play in Nice. Carlos and I laughed when Salvador and Aaron grabbed towels from their room and said, “We're going to the beach!” as soon as we checked into our hotel. All beaches in the south of France are topless, and we knew the boys were not swimming with their bodies as much as with their eyes.

On our way to the venue, Kevin, our tour manager, came onto the tour bus, his face a tangled storm. “A plane went down last night …,” he said, pausing with a heavy sigh.

Carlos and I looked at him, waiting.

“I think Wayne's wife was on it,” Kevin said, dropping his head.

“Kevin. Are you sure?” I asked.

“It was TWA Flight 800. The promoter said Ana Maria was on the flight.”

Carlos put his head in his hands. Wayne Shorter, the man of ten thousand hearts, who gave love and joy through his horn, had played the Nice Jazz Festival the night before. I wanted to jump off the bus and run back to the hotel where Wayne was staying.
But what could I say? What would it matter?

Kevin's head was still hanging. “Wayne is on a flight home.”

What would he go home to?
My heart broke for him. I remembered the last time Ana Maria and I were in Antibes shopping in boutiques, her soft, dark brown hair falling sexily into her eyes. Her voice was low and husky from years of smoking, and her eyes were bright. She tried on a tight skirt and cropped blouse, turning to the side in the mirror. “I look too fat, don't I, Deb-
bie?” She pushed her stomach in with her hands and turned to face me.

How could someone with her luscious golden skin and gorgeous legs ask such a question? “You look wonderful, Ana,” I said. “Buy it.”

I walked through the trees behind the venue, thinking about Ana Maria's spirit, her smile, her joy and fire. She and Wayne had been together since she was seventeen. Portuguese and black. Both brilliant.

The next morning the children and I were scheduled to fly back to the Bay Area. They were amazingly brave on our ten-hour flight. During every bump in the air, I knew they were thinking of Ana Maria and fearing we were going down, too. I was searching the clouds with reverence and faith to see her soul dancing by.

moke billowed behind Bald Mountain—gray, red, and yellow—the acrid smell of dry California shrubs and grasses burning. From our house, the plume of smoke covered half the sky in the west, above Stinson Beach. I drove to pick up the children from school and listened to the news on the radio. The fire was in Point Reyes, the pristine national park and seashore where gray whales migrate in the winter. The burning began on Mount Vision; and residents of Point Reyes, Inverness, and surrounding towns worried as ashes fell on their homes and cars. After twenty-four hours, nine thousand acres were burned and four teenagers were suspected of starting the devastation. I watched and listened with concern and compassion for the boys.
What must it feel like to have something in your care rage out of control, leaving you helpless?
News reports said that acres and acres of burned trees and flora would be scarred for years, as well as the animal population. Yet, just a few months later, after winter rains, regeneration began. Grasses sprouted rampant across the land,
songbirds birthed in record numbers, and abundant new seeds sprang up from beneath the charred ground, turning hills and trails green again.

African traditions impart the belief that fire can remove a block and keep one's vision alive. The Vision Fire represented what happened in my life after the personal changes and growth I experienced in 1994. Everything I knew about myself, my marriage, and life had been burned to ash—and a new energy and concept of who I am was born. I connected with a spiritual awareness that was outside the constraints of all I had followed before, and I searched for a spiritual place of worship that would not dictate but inspire. I visited nine churches in Marin, looking for a haven that would not tell me to love and obey my husband while forsaking my female power, and that would not have a limited view of women. Finally, I found Unity, whose belief is that God, Divine Mind, is the Source and Creator of all and that we are spiritual beings with the breath of God within us, a church that embraces the world and people's varied beliefs. I breathed in the power of my body, spirit, and mind, further exploring my soul.

There was not enough time for me to study, raise our children, and manage Santana. With a heavy heart and a sense of duty to our business, I decided to leave Mills College. It was as if, once more, I had to choose between serving others and developing myself. I felt creatively starved, so I enrolled in a six-week writing course on autobiography taught by Melba Pattillo Beals at an independent bookstore. She had written the acclaimed memoir
Warriors Don't Cry
, about her year trying to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the
brutal racism she had lived through. With her encouraging instruction, I wrote about hearing the hurtful words of the children on the playground when I was eight and discovering that I was biracial. For the first time, I comprehended how deeply that event had affected my life.

After the bookstore course ended, Melba asked those of us interested in continuing our writing to attend a class at her home. A new vision for my life opened as I began to write my story. Each week we wrote a chapter and then took it to class and read it out loud. During the week, we rewrote, using the comments from other class members to clarify and change the writing. Pouring out my thoughts was liberating and exhilarating, but Melba would ultimately ask me when I read aloud, “What did you feel?”

I wanted to cry, I was so frustrated. I thought I had emptied my heart and guts, but she questioned my feelings week after week, finally breaking through my system of self-control. For years I had protected myself behind a stoic smile, burying everything that had hurt me or that I had inflicted upon myself: not finishing college; loving Sly; following Sri Chinmoy. All the uncomfortable experiences of my life were pushed down into the center of my chest and covered over with a layer of hardness. My recognition of this was the first step in releasing my voice. I began to notice why I was not living my truth or allowing my essence to burst forth in the way that dozens of women I admired had done. They stepped out and lived in their power. I kept at my process, with Melba forcing me to leave excuses behind and write, no matter what the cost to my heart.
Writing flavored my relationship with my family and strengthened the acuity of my parenting. As I exposed my experiences and revealed my hurts and stumbles through life, empathy and understanding released me from fearing negative experiences the children were facing. Watching our children maneuver through life situations similar to ones I had experienced caused me to grapple with “truth.” As they felt normal adolescent angst and pressure from their peers, Carlos and I learned that drugs and alcohol were popping up at parties.
Should we tell the kids what we did as teens, or should we isolate and protect them—or even pretend that we bypassed everything that was appearing in their lives?
Every parent has been faced with this dilemma, but I had never felt so uncertain. I chose to reveal the facts of my past only if asked, and I would openly discuss and try to listen to the children's stories like a comfortable piece of furniture on which they could relax and explore the choices before them. Sometimes, this posture was possible only because I was receiving information from them that let me know where they stood on the issues. Other times, keeping my mouth shut while they talked was one of the hardest challenges I faced.

My parents had told me what not to do without revealing what they had experimented with or how they had lived. I had no frame of reference in telling my children my stories. “Don't lecture,” the counselor said. “Tell them why you're worried, what the dangers are, and the possible negative outcomes. Try to remember how you felt at their age.” I had been exposed to much less when I was in middle school and high school. My interests had been friends, cheerleading, and music. I knew that
keeping my children busy was important for their success as teens. My technique was to keep the children engaged in activities they loved: Salvador, music lessons and camps; Stella, volleyball and tutoring young kids; Jelli, art and writing. I bumped along, trying not to break their spirits yet keep them healthy and whole. I often felt as though I were riding a wild bull in a rodeo—I held on as tightly as I could, sometimes getting thrown off, but never trampled.