Tizita Page 36
Adam wasted no time. Shouting, “Beat you into the water,” he ran. Shaking my head at the craziness of it all, I took off after him.
The sea was rough, but we were both strong swimmers. We dove in nearly simultaneously and came up for air, gasping for breath. We managed to get out beyond the breakers and swam and dog-paddled around each other, making fun of each other’s strokes, shaking water from our heads like puppies, pointing out the boats farther out. He disappeared into the rolling water and the next thing I knew, his hands were pulling me underwater by my feet. Kicking myself free and rising up sputtering, I furiously splashed him in the face. He dove to get away and came up with his hair covered in a caul of seaweed. He flung it off without ceremony and trailed his hands in the water, letting the ocean wash them.
“Ew,” I cried, teasing. But instead of teasing me back, he swam closer and grabbed me by the waist and pulled me tightly to him. What was this? As I frantically dog-paddled to stay up, his hardness pushed against my pubic bone. But his whisper in my ear was as soft as the whirr of a hummingbird’s wing.
“Let’s go back to the hotel, Fleur. I want to take you to bed.”
“What?” I swam away, but he came after me again.
His voice was huskier than I could have imagined. “You heard me. I want to take you to bed.”
“Adam, what are you talking about? We can’t just .... Where?”
“I rented us a room.” My dog paddling became considerably jerkier as I began to take in what he was saying.
“Wait. You planned this?”
The expression on his wet face was steady and earnest. “Actually, yes. I did.”
“Why you ... you sneaky Pete.”
He laughed. I laughed. I was terrified.
“Will you?” he asked.
“Yes.” I couldn’t believe he’d asked. I couldn’t believe I’d agreed.
If I’ve learned anything by now, it’s that some things must stay veiled. Suffice it to say that when the night was nearly over and we were groggy with jetlag and soaked with sweat, Adam felt around on the bedside table for one of the floating gardenias the hotel staff had thoughtfully placed in a shallow Japanese bowl. He tucked it behind my ear so tenderly I might have been a baby and he my mother. Or I a mother and he my child, bringing me the sweetest flower. Or, or, or. Really, there never had been a category for what he meant to me, and there wasn’t one now. I drifted into a floral-scented dream world.
But I woke the next morning thinking, not of flowers or sex or love, but of Zeki. Did you think I could forget him? I would make sure the world knew all about him once I found a way to utilize his parting gift to me of the instrumentality of gravity waves in the application of P.D.
I thought, too, of Makeda, my ihite—her haunting ululations, her courage to stay where death loomed so close. I’d seen too many deaths, myself. I was constitutionally unsuited to it. As a child, I’d cried when Mother’s David Austins dropped their petals into my hands and was despondent for days when her Anne Boleyn shriveled up, a victim of root rot. I wasn’t getting any better with practice. I hated the economy of the natural world, hated that the price of nothing being wasted was life feeding on life, eternally dependent upon death. For all I knew, I’d pursued P.D. to at least momentarily bring things back from the abyss.
Adam stirred from his sleep and smiled. He had a crust of dried spittle at the side of his mouth. He stretched like a great cat. “Good morning, glory.”
I gave a half-hearted grin.
“What is it?” he asked in a cautious tone.
“Oh, Adam, I’m afraid I’m not so glorious.”
He sat up, reflexively covering his chest with the sheet. “Oh, God. Was I wrong? Are you regretting what we—”
I shook my head emphatically. “No! It’s just ... I’d make a crummy Buddhist. I don’t think I’ll ever make my peace with life being suffering.”
Looking relieved, he leaned forward and brushed his lips against my cheek. He smelled of something besides Campbell’s Chicken Soup B.O. He smelled of me. “It’s not all suffering.”
But melancholy had sunk its teeth in me. “No, really. I’m always a little sad inside. That can’t be normal.”
He threw up his hands. “Oh, come on. You’ve got some cockamamie idea that you’re weird. Unusual, sure. You’re a quantum physicist, for Christ’s sake. You want to be average, too? Fleur, that sensitivity in you, even that sadness, is precisely why I love you.” He paused, then put a finger on my nipple and traced a circle on it that made it stand at attention. “Well, that and a few other things,” he murmured, licking it now.
I felt my tweeter get wet, but still, I didn’t succumb. Something was holding me back.
Adam stopped, looking stricken. “It’s not Assefa, is it? Do you still love him?”
I really pulled away now. “Adam, you can’t ask me that.”
His face flushed. “Why not?” he said gruffly. “You had sex with me last night. Don’t you think I have a right to know?”
There was a fire flickering in his green eyes that I’d never seen before. This was a new Adam. I told him so.
“Fleur, I just .... Listen, I don’t think you know your power. That’s dangerous for a woman. You need to know it or you’ll end up doing harm. Harm you don’t intend.”
“Did I hurt Assefa?”
“This isn’t about Assefa, damn it, but no, I don’t think you had anything to do with what happened to him. He had his own demons.” Adam fell silent, and my heart ached for him. “So do I.”
“What are yours?”
“I’m too fucking nice.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
I repeated, “No, you’re not.”
“Am.”
“Not.”
And then we both laughed.
Looking relieved, Adam gave my arm a squeeze. “I don’t know about you, but I could kill for a cup of coffee.” I nodded. He leaned over toward the bedside table and put in a call for room service, then rose from the bed like a careless god, flung open the drapes to flood the room with sunlight, and grabbed the box of donuts we’d left unfinished the night before. Only after our lovemaking had he confessed that, when he’d given Donald Mackenzie our cab fare, he’d taken a chance and paid the all-too-willing Scot an extravagant tip to buy a box of Krispy Kremes and leave it for him at the front desk. And only in L.A. would a hotel employee tie the familiar polka dot box in rose and sage ribbon before setting it on a small table for us like a hospitality gift. After Africa, the sheer indulgence of it fairly took my breath away. I knew it would probably take Adam half a year to pay for all this.
Room service arrived with a knock on our door just as I was stepping from the shower into the thick white bath sheet Adam was holding out for me. He gestured with his head and left the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. I heard him cheerily wishing the waiter a good morning. Suddenly, I found myself fighting for breath. How would I ever survive if he went away?
I opened the door as soon as I sensed the coast was clear. Adam sat naked on the bed, his white hotel robe flung across the foot of the rumpled duvet. He was dipping a donut into his coffee with the bemused air of a man who’d just won the lottery. I was still in shock myself. I shuffled across the creamy Persian carpet and sat beside him, my damp body liking the warm feel of his skin. At least that part of me was uncomplicated.
I wanted time to stop, but of course it wouldn’t. From a cupboard in my mind tumbled something Stanley had once said about the nature of being human: that we were each one brief nanosecond in a vast cosmic wave, the void oozing itself into shape and color and sound, then sucking it all back into blankness again.
I knew it was true. The matter, energy, and yes, information that briefly coalesced into the life of one discrete individual was just that—fleeting. And beautiful and cruel. There was no inalienable right to happiness, liberty, or even a vote for life or death except for the suicidal souls of this world. Everyone I�
�d ever met would be ripped away from this incarnation by a force with all the impersonality of a man running late for work, dashing out his front door oblivious to the ant he’s crushing underfoot.
But in this moment, the dew was falling from the lip of the leaf. Adam put a hand on my thigh and kissed me. His mouth was moist and tasted of coffee, tasted even more strongly of Krispy Kreme Dulce de Leche. He set down his cup and we entered the dark, melting together into its crevices. A musical refrain played inside my head. What was it? Surely not Daft Punk’s Get Lucky? A little giggle burbled up from my throat and, even as he proceeded to kiss the hollow of my neck, the curved shell of my ear, Adam chuckled with me despite having no idea why I’d laughed.
But that was the point, wasn’t it? We were just two loose-limbed kids who’d thrust ourselves blindly beyond the shoreline, all gooseflesh and manic jumpiness in the icy water, screaming as an impossibly big wave rushed toward us. At its crest the water hesitated, as if momentarily surveying what it was about to consume.
I dove with Adam into the belly of it. My heart beat crazily with nearly equal parts hope and fear, with the tiniest advantage to hope.
Acknowledgements
In writing this leg of Fleur’s journey, I found myself more than once needing to borrow cupfuls of the courage displayed during their lifetimes by my bubbie and zayda, Bessie and Chaim Wodlinger, and my parents, Ethel and Charlie Karson. And while it was the genius of C.G. Jung that opened the door to my imagination, my stamina for writing fiction in tandem with maintaining a vibrant analytic practice would have flagged without the soul centering afforded by my precious Heath, Noble, and Karson kin, as well as certain humorously inclined British beloveds and a circle of extraordinary friends who take our world seriously, laugh loud, and live large. My social media tribe continues to remind me of the living fabric of interconnection, and I’m especially grateful to Carolyn Raffensperger and the Apache and Arikara healers whose generous efforts helped keep the circle of life intact at a critical moment.
The beating heart of music played a seminal role in the unfolding of this story. The richness of Ethiopia and, in particular, the characters of Assefa and Makeda quickened to life inside me in response to the tizita songs of Seyfu Yohannes and Teddy Afro, whose “Aydenegetim Lebie” never fails to make me cry. A shout out to Deborah Howell and Neil Baylis for egging me on just enough to get me dancing with the Krar Collective onstage at the Getty, and grateful kudos to Claire Noble for finding the perfect Ethiopian necklace, fashioned from the recycled bullet casings of war, to remind me that creativity and love can transform even the most terrible suffering. Many thanks to Chris Heath, Janet Muff, Constance Crosby, Judie Harte, Pamela Kirst, and Elizabeth Trupin-Pulli, who read earlier drafts of the novel and offered helpful and encouraging feedback. Dr. Craig Stanford kindly shared with me the physical characteristics of the actual Gombe; my yoga teacher and dear friend Alison Crowley kept this old body of mine fairly fluid despite way too many hours at the computer; and Smoky Zeidel and Malcolm Campbell were warm-hearted advocates in bringing me into the Thomas-Jacob family of authors. I’ve been enormously inspired by the work of Jane Goodall and hope I’ve not been too presumptuous in my fictional rendering of her and the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve. My publisher Melinda Clayton’s can-do approach and collaborative spirit have made the physical incarnation of this book more of a joy than I could ever have imagined.
This novel had its inception in repeated visitations by a strong and supple African woman who saved my sanity during the dark nights of a serious illness. She moved the two of us through dense brush, crawling on hands and knees, with me suspended beneath her ample belly like a baby sloth. She felt to me like the first woman who’d ever lived, a magnificent personal image of the mitochondrial Eve, whose strength of spirit and DNA have stood us all in good stead for thousands of generations. May we as a species find in ourselves the wisdom to do justice to her and all our ancestors and to this exquisite earth that is our home.
Also by Sharon Heath
The History of My Body, The Fleur Trilogy, Book 1
About the Author
Sharon Heath writes fiction and non-fiction exploring the interplay of science and spirit, politics and pop culture. A certified Jungian Analyst in private practice and faculty member of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, she served as guest editor of the special issue of Psychological Perspectives, “The Child Within/The Child Without.” Her chapter “The Church of Her Body” appears in the anthology Marked by Fire: Stories of the Jungian Way, and her chapter “A Jungian Alice in Social Media Land: Some Reflections on Solastalgia, Kinship Libido, and Tribes Formed on Facebook” is included in Depth Psychology and the Digital Age. She has blogged for The Huffington Post and TerraSpheres and has given talks in the United States and Canada on topics ranging from the place of soul in social media to gossip, envy, secrecy, and belonging. She maintains her own blog at www.sharonheath.com.
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Also by Sharon Heath
The Fleur Trilogy
The History of My Body
Tizita