Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart by Alice Walker Page A

was exhausted by the time Armando’s song was completed. She wanted only to sleep. Armando turned to Cosmi and asked him to bring her a special medicine. He explained to Kate, as Cosmi approached with a pitcher full of an earth-colored liquid, that this medicine, Bobinsana, would help her have lucid dreams. And in her lucid dream tonight, she would be able to talk in the right way to her ancestor.
    You will not have fear, he said. You will not have guilt. You will be able to state clearly your love of him but also your need to be free.
    The hard work will be, he added gravely, letting go of your need not to be free. Because you see, even though today everybody talks about ancestors in a somewhat lofty way—ancestor this, ancestor that—they are actually very much like one’s siblings. He laughed. Some of them need to be negotiated.
    When the Spaniards came they made a game of slicing our people in two. We’d never seen a sword, you know. And they must have thought killing us in this way was entertaining. They fed our babies to their dogs. What they did to women is perhaps better unsaid. We are left with the record and the consequences of this behavior in our own bodies and psyches, and we must work with it. Not because it is Spanish behavior, no. Because it is human behavior. And we too are humans.
    It will never work to think we are exempt from madness. I think you will be surprised to learn what it is this ancestor wants to tell you. He merely hooked you with that stuff about vanity. And why? Because he knows you are vain. Vanity interests you. But there is more to the story, I can assure you.
    Kate was so sleepy by now that she staggered. Lalika stepped forward and placed an arm around her waist. The woman who always sat next to Lalika in circle, who was actually called Missy, came up to support her on the other side. In this odd threesome they tottered along the path, through the forest and toward Kate’s tiny hut.
             
    Mistress Kate, he said, you can have no idea how long it takes to die. Even if it is all over in an instant. Time is relative, and you really understand it when you’re dying.
    In the dream they were in the countryside, a countryside that showed no signs of modernity. Kate was standing on a road, a rough dirt road, quite narrow, and he was sitting beside it, not on the ground, but suspended in the air. His bloody gums, which had always seemed to lunge toward her out of his mouth, were now barely visible, though flashes of a ragged redness revealed nothing had changed. He didn’t seem to be showing her his wound. But was intent, instead, on telling her something he knew.
    Why am I Mistress Kate? she asked primly.
    He shrugged. You are not a slave. You are wearing shoes.
    Oh, she said, looking down at herself. It was true; on her feet were Birkenstock sandals. And she was wearing a frilly white dress.
    Here’s a parasol, he said, handing her an acorn.
    She laughed because there was a parasol on its top. Every acorn was shaped that way; to protect itself from the rain. Rain rot.
    My death took several lifetimes, he said. During which I felt every moment of my life in which I could have been better. Horrible. And yet, I was shot through the heart. Killed instantly, they said. They hated I’d been killed instantly, they’d hoped to have some fun with me.
    By “they” do you mean . . . ?
    Night riders, he said.
    Even though she knew she was dreaming, and could see her dreaming body lying under the mosquito net on her narrow bed, Kate felt herself draw back.
    It is not what you think, he said. He paused. Rather, it is exactly what you think. Yes, there were centuries of terrorism, and this was a common incident. The nigger running, the white fiends chasing. The sound of the dogs. They were curiously inept at creating entertainment for themselves that didn’t center around us. I imagine this has not changed.
    Aw, naw, you shot ’im through the heart. One of them said this, as they