It is part of no prayer I have ever heard. I do not know where it came from.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope. O remember that my life is wind
.
At once, the chaos of the dream falls away, a black mirror shattered by words, and I am sitting up, staring into Fairfax’s face. Dim light from a street lamp seeps through the window. In it I can see the disheveled spikes of her hair, like a fiery halo, which I have envied since we were children, and the wrinkled impression her pillow has left across one of her cheeks. The orphanage and the chapel and the ship have disappeared. It has happened just the same way almost every night for two months.
“Shit,” says Fairfax. “I can’t take anymore of this. Either get some help, or I’m moving out.”
I press the sheets against my forehead to soak away the dream sweat. I look around the room. It takes me a moment to realize that I’m not seeing the adobe walls of the dormitory at Our Lady of the Harbor. It’s been almost two years since Fairfax and I left the Catholic orphanage. Now we live on the campus at Las Piedras University, in a “temporary dorm”—really just a trailer with several sleeping cubicles and a big bathroom.
Outside I hear the night wind rushing from the land to the sea, prowling around beaverboard corners, scrabbling at the cheap window frames. This little box of a shelter feels like paper compared to Our Lady of the Harbor, with its thick walls, oak beams, and heavy, nail-studded doors.
“I don’t want any help,” I say. “I’ve made up my mind this dream is never coming back again.”
But Fairfax knows me too well.
She sighs and switches on my chipped bedside lamp. In its comforting yellow glow, our room is a perfect illustration of the differences between us. My side is cluttered with treasures I have gathered at random from secondhand stores and flea markets, while hers is stark and clean as a monk’s cell. I buy wobbly tables, hats with holes in them, and boxes full of crystals and buttons. Fairfax prefers modern European prints and slim watches with no numbers on their faces.
She sits beside me on the bed, naked except for a pair of kelly green satin bikinis and a thin gold necklace. She refuses to wear nightclothes. They get tangled around her like ropes in the night, she says, and they’re good for nothing.
She hugs herself in the cool night air. Her skin is covered with freckles and goose bumps. “Nobody, not even you, can just decide not to have a dream. You know as well as I do it’ll be back again. This isn’t normal, Electra. Something’s wrong.”
She looks down at the linoleum floor, looks up again, her chin held very high. “I think I really mean it. You and your nightmares are driving me crazy. If you don’t talk to somebody about this, I’m moving out.”
She turns off the light. I listen to the slap of her feet on the floor as she walks back to her bed. I pull the covers up and stare out the window at the thrashing treetops. In her own way, she is just trying to help.
The next morning, a Tuesday, Fairfax is sitting in her bathrobe playing her cello when I leave our room. I wave good-bye, as usual; she nods vaguely, as usual, without taking her eyes from the music.
I have an early class on Tuesdays, number theory, the only course I am taking this quarter. In June, when the summer term opened, the elegance and purity of number theory delighted me—made the world seem acute, well formed, and larger than humankind. But now it is August. For two months, dreams of wind and ships have robbed me of sleep. Often, the concepts our professor introduces make no sense to me, and sometimes proofs that would have seemed obvious before escape me.
This morning, just as I expect, I doze through the class. When the hour is over, the professor takes me aside. “Electra, I regard you as one of our most promising mathematics majors. But lately I’ve noticed a certain … shall we say …
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope. O remember that my life is wind
.
At once, the chaos of the dream falls away, a black mirror shattered by words, and I am sitting up, staring into Fairfax’s face. Dim light from a street lamp seeps through the window. In it I can see the disheveled spikes of her hair, like a fiery halo, which I have envied since we were children, and the wrinkled impression her pillow has left across one of her cheeks. The orphanage and the chapel and the ship have disappeared. It has happened just the same way almost every night for two months.
“Shit,” says Fairfax. “I can’t take anymore of this. Either get some help, or I’m moving out.”
I press the sheets against my forehead to soak away the dream sweat. I look around the room. It takes me a moment to realize that I’m not seeing the adobe walls of the dormitory at Our Lady of the Harbor. It’s been almost two years since Fairfax and I left the Catholic orphanage. Now we live on the campus at Las Piedras University, in a “temporary dorm”—really just a trailer with several sleeping cubicles and a big bathroom.
Outside I hear the night wind rushing from the land to the sea, prowling around beaverboard corners, scrabbling at the cheap window frames. This little box of a shelter feels like paper compared to Our Lady of the Harbor, with its thick walls, oak beams, and heavy, nail-studded doors.
“I don’t want any help,” I say. “I’ve made up my mind this dream is never coming back again.”
But Fairfax knows me too well.
She sighs and switches on my chipped bedside lamp. In its comforting yellow glow, our room is a perfect illustration of the differences between us. My side is cluttered with treasures I have gathered at random from secondhand stores and flea markets, while hers is stark and clean as a monk’s cell. I buy wobbly tables, hats with holes in them, and boxes full of crystals and buttons. Fairfax prefers modern European prints and slim watches with no numbers on their faces.
She sits beside me on the bed, naked except for a pair of kelly green satin bikinis and a thin gold necklace. She refuses to wear nightclothes. They get tangled around her like ropes in the night, she says, and they’re good for nothing.
She hugs herself in the cool night air. Her skin is covered with freckles and goose bumps. “Nobody, not even you, can just decide not to have a dream. You know as well as I do it’ll be back again. This isn’t normal, Electra. Something’s wrong.”
She looks down at the linoleum floor, looks up again, her chin held very high. “I think I really mean it. You and your nightmares are driving me crazy. If you don’t talk to somebody about this, I’m moving out.”
She turns off the light. I listen to the slap of her feet on the floor as she walks back to her bed. I pull the covers up and stare out the window at the thrashing treetops. In her own way, she is just trying to help.
The next morning, a Tuesday, Fairfax is sitting in her bathrobe playing her cello when I leave our room. I wave good-bye, as usual; she nods vaguely, as usual, without taking her eyes from the music.
I have an early class on Tuesdays, number theory, the only course I am taking this quarter. In June, when the summer term opened, the elegance and purity of number theory delighted me—made the world seem acute, well formed, and larger than humankind. But now it is August. For two months, dreams of wind and ships have robbed me of sleep. Often, the concepts our professor introduces make no sense to me, and sometimes proofs that would have seemed obvious before escape me.
This morning, just as I expect, I doze through the class. When the hour is over, the professor takes me aside. “Electra, I regard you as one of our most promising mathematics majors. But lately I’ve noticed a certain … shall we say …
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