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Beyond her fragile form there stretched a vast landscape of sand and rock and all manner of lifeless things. There was no color, save for billowing clouds of slate blue that swarmed above her soundlessly. Lightning seared the depthless heavens, blinding her in jagged rhythms . . . but this storm was made of dreams. This was a storm born of feeling and wonder, and such things would not slow her progress.
Sarita continued on, the sound of her breath echoing into the silence. Her pulse quickened and her chest heaved, as if her exertions were real. Perhaps they were. She had never attempted such a journey before. She had not known what to expect, or what cost her body would have to pay. As she walked on, she willed herself to relax. She would not succumb to fear. She was old; it was true. She had recently celebrated her ninety-second birthday, but she was not ready to leave the world of matter and meaning. She was not ready, and therefore he was not ready. Her son would not be permitted to die while she still had the strength to fight for him. She took a quick breath and allowed a smile to wash the strain from her features. Yes, she had the strength. In this peculiar space between here and there, her love would triumph. Encouraged, she set her bag down for a moment and straightened her shoulders, gathering the ends of her shawl in a loose knot at her neck. She was wearing a nightgown made of thin cotton. The windless cold seeped through it easily, chilling her flesh. No matter, she thought. There was no turning back now. Her senses might fail to recognize him, but her heart would not. Scanning the landscape once more, she picked up the heavy bag with the other hand and resolutely shuffled on.
It was a nylon shopping bag, the kind that she would have taken to market in those cool early mornings in Guadalajara, during the days just before her youngest had been born. It showed a portrait of the Virgin on the outside, printed in bright colors, and within it were many items blessed by her own prayers and intent. She gave the bag a gentle shake, as if to reassure herself of her mission, and thought of those days so long ago, just before the birth of her thirteenth child, when all of life seemed reassuring. It had been a sweet time: she was forty-three, still beautiful, and wedded to a handsome young man to whom she had already given three sons. He had married her right out of school, in spite of her age and her nine children by a previous marriage. He had married her against the wishes of his family. He had married her, some said, because she worked her wicked magic on him. Well, there would always be those who were skeptical. They had married out of love, pure and simple. From love, four healthy sons were born.
The old woman slowed her pace, then stopped. The storm still flashed and billowed around her, but its eerie silence was gone. Now, beyond the muffled sounds of her breathing, there was something else in the air. Where there should have been thunder, there was now music, building in the distance like a growling wind. He must be near, she thought. She stood where she was, listening, until it became clear that a particular song was playing, rising from the horizon to meet the sky’s fury. It was music she recognized from a time long ago. She could hear her son singing to music like this as a boy, his little fingers moving along the strings of an imaginary guitar while he mouthed senseless syllables and shook his whole body to the rhythm of it, just as he had seen his older brothers do. What had he called this sound? What . . . ? Oh, yes.
“It’s rock-and-roll, Mamá!” she remembered him shouting. “The music of life!”
Yes, a rock-and-roll song was playing in his head even now. That was the sound that raced along the lightning bolts in this blackening sky and whipped like cyclone winds through her gray hair, even when everything around her was still. Her senses had not failed her. She could feel his mind now, and hear his immense and eternal heart reverberating with joy. He was close.
Setting down the shopping bag again, she wrapped her woven shawl more tightly around her. She was dressed for bed, wearing what she’d had on when everyone had arrived at the house to join her in ceremony. In some distant corner of her consciousness, she could hear those guests, too—her children, her grandchildren, her students, and her friends. They had come at her request—for the obvious reason that no child or grandchild, no apprentice or assistant, ever refused Mother Sarita. They had come in quiet resignation—bringing gourds and drums, lighting candles, and burning sage. They had come to sing, to pray, to plead. They had come to bring him back, the thirteenth son of a woman who could not be ignored. They had come as the ancestors would come, to do the job of spiritual warriors.
On this night, with so much at stake, Sarita had been transported from the circle of the faithful in her living room to a world that existed only in imagination. She had trespassed into the mind of another. She was willing to pay the price for that at some other time, but for now she must keep going. For now she must walk without apology into her son’s dream, and she must bring him back—dragging him by an insolent ear, if she had to. Certainly, she had done it many times before.
She shook her head as she remembered the child he once had been. She remembered those black eyes full of humor and mischief, and the little hands that had reached for her face with love when she was tired or touched by sadness. There was nothing—not even death—that would keep her from him. There was no logic that could undo her need for him, not even his logic. In her ninety-two years, Sarita had experienced all the joys and sorrows of being thirteen times a mother. She had survived the deaths of two of her children before this. She had lost husbands, sisters, brothers—but there was enough life in her still to fight one last time for what she loved. Picking up the bag again, she shook a little ethereal dust from the image of the Virgin Guadalupe and searched the landscape. She sniffed the air for some other sign, hesitated, and then turned around. Something had caught her attention, something that could not yet be seen. She would change course. She must follow her intuition—and the music.
The music grew louder with every painstaking step she took. It seemed to vibrate from ground and sky at once, pulsing to a loud beat . . . perhaps to the beat of the drums in her living room. She thanked God silently for obedient children and continued walking, her feet moving heavily through a thick spray of illuminated dust. Beyond the near horizon, she could see Earth rising over the rim of this vacant dream, blazing with a spirited light. She caught her breath. In the darkening sky of storm and shimmering heat, she could see something silhouetted against Earth’s brilliance. A tree loomed in the distance! Its heavy limbs seemed to undulate with erotic pleasure, causing green leaves to quiver and shine. Sarita marveled at the sight of something so full and fertile in a land of such vast emptiness.
Miguel . . . she whispered. In any dream where there was color and life, there would be her son. He used to say that fun followed him everywhere. Well, this was fun. This was magic. Wherever he was, there would be a celebration—of that she was certain. She walked on toward the tree, the music growing louder. The walk might have taken a lifetime, or a minute, or no time at all. She was aware only that her heart was beating to a lively tune while she walked. She must have come a long way, whatever the time, for the massive tree spread before her now—tall, wide, and graceful. Its limbs stretched in all directions, as if beckoning the universe into a huge, benevolent embrace. Sarita hesitated by a root that jutted out of star-silt, and peered up into what looked like a galaxy of suspended fruit twinkling in the unworldly light. As she gazed in wonder, her eyes fell on the one she had come to find. On the lowest limb of the gigantic tree, almost hidden among the dancing shadows and the thousand sparkling leaves, sat her son.
Miguel Ruiz was lounging against the trunk of the tree in his hospital gown, quietly munching on an apple. Seeing her now, his eyes brightened and he waved enthusiastically for her to come closer. His mother edged toward the tree, choosing her steps carefully through the enormous tangle of roots, until she was standing by the limb that supported him. It swooped low along the ground, making it possible for her to look directly into his eyes.
“Sarita!” he exclaimed, wiping juice from his lips with the tip of his thumb. “You’ve joined me! Good!” As she was about to speak, Miguel turned his whole body in the direction of the improbable horizon. “Do you see what I am seeing, Mamá?” Miguel pointed enthusiastically at the vision of Earth and all her exquisite colors. Sarita caught a glimpse of her son’s bare bottom as the back of his gown fell open. She was tempted to spank him right there, grown man that he was, but he was anxiously calling for her attention.
“Sarita, look!”
From where she now stood, she could see the planet floating beyond the bending branches of the giant tree. It shone bright and clear against a midnight sky, spinning slowly at the edge of the fantasy they occupied.
“La tierra,” she said, sighing. “Where we both belong. It is time to stop this idiocy.”
“Do you see them?” Miguel asked urgently. “All the moving lights?”
Frowning, the old woman peered through the branches again. This was not Earth as she remembered it. As the planet slowly turned, she could see waves of light burning bright, then lifting away and evanescing into space. The lights burned hot in some isolated places, and not in others. But wait . . . no. Some streamed over the entire globe. And even as little sparks rose and dissolved, more waves of light fell onto Earth like liquid dreams.
“Yes! Dreams!” her son exclaimed, as if he had followed her thoughts. “These are the dreams of men and women who change humanity. Small ones, bigger ones, and great, lasting ones. Dreams that begin and end, live, and then die.”
“If they die, where do they go?” she asked, puzzled at the rising and falling of light, much like the bouncing waves of sound displayed on her grandson’s stereo. “And where do they begin?”
“From creation—and back to creation!” he said with a laugh, taking another bite from the apple. “Do you see that bright one?” he marveled. “Wonderful! It feels like George, whose message is still remembered. So gentle a dream . . . do you see it?”
“George . . . ah, yes. He was your student. The very short one?”
“No, he was one of the Beatles, Sarita. And much taller than me.”
Oh, yes. Now she remembered. The Beatles. The sound that had serenaded her to this spot was their sound, their music. She was only now recovering from the throbbing noise in her head.
“Do you see my dream, Sarita?” Miguel shouted. “There! It shines in that area over there! And look! The threads of it are moving, getting brighter . . . everywhere! There! A yellow-gold—no, red-gold there. Wait!”
Sarita let the bag drop from her hands and gripped his shoulder. Miguel swung around to look at her, his face still glowing with joy.
“Your message is alive and growing, yes,” she said. “There it is. We see it.”
“Isn’t it magnificent!” With that Miguel abandoned his apple, tossing it aside. It vanished as soon as it left his hand. He moved to observe the vision of a dreaming humanity more closely, but his mother’s words distracted him, sounding stern and cheerless.
“We need Miguel to keep this dream alive. You are returning to me now,” Sarita said in as strong a voice as her son had ever heard. “It is not your time to die.”
“I’m already dead,” her thirteenth child answered, smiling.
“You are not. The doctors are caring for you. We are praying for you. The ancestors are moving heaven and Earth for you.”
Miguel twisted his face in mock despair, but his eyes still gleamed. “Madre, not the ancestors, please.”
“Your heart is mended now, m’ijo. You have only to take a breath and come back to us. Come back!”
“You’re talking about a heart that’s damaged beyond repair, Sarita. My lungs have failed and my body is collapsing without me.” He looked at her tenderly. “I’m a doctor, too, remember.”
“You are a coward as well! Come back and finish what you began!”
“You know that I’ve given all I can.”
“Have you?”
“Oh! Let me tell you about the sleeping dream I had before I got here!”
“Miguel.”
“I was one of the warriors who guarded Tenochtitlan and the sacred lake. I was—well, of course I wasn’t, but in a way I still am—that warrior. I could feel the fear and the urgency of the moment, the total surrender, and then it seemed that everything became starlight and space.”
“Stop, Miguel! Your world is more than starlight and space. You have a home, and people who love you. More than that, you have me. You are my son, and you must return to me!”
“All of it is starlight and space—this world, that world, this mother and this son.”
“You are not starlight and space. You are—”
“I am exactly that! Look at me!” With that, he disappeared among the twinkling orbs that danced before her eyes. There were only stars now, and the space between.
“Come back!” she shouted.
“Impossible,” he replied, laughing, and she saw him again within the tree that seemed to come and go, straddling another limb, his bare legs swinging as he waved to her. “Stay with me, Mamá.”
His mother’s fear exploded into fury, and in that moment Miguel saw her transformed. The frail old woman who had come to him, wrapped in a shawl and shivering with cold, was an old woman no more. Before him, in the full sun of an eternal moment, stood a young and beautiful woman, naked but for the shawl that fell from her beautiful breasts and shoulders. She scowled at him, her hair caught in the wind that had risen in her anger. A fierce light shone over her, licking at her hair and skin like dragon fire.
“You are mine!” she raged. “How dare you leave! How dare you!”
“I haven’t left you, my beloved,” he replied gently, watching her with intense interest. “But the dream of Miguel is done. Game over.”
“Not done! Not over!” she cried. “You can do much more—and you will do much more!” She turned her angry gaze toward the planet again, and pointed at the glittering lights. “Are you content to see your dream fade—here, right here before your eyes?”
Miguel, recognizing this voice, answered with a smile. “You can’t move me, my love. My journey is endless, but my poor body won’t go another mile.”
“The body will do as you say. It always has! Come away from this place and return to me . . . to us!” In the far distance rose the sounds of his family—brothers and sons, their wives and children—as they chanted in a circle, calling for his return to the physical world. He knew they meant to help. He knew they followed his mother’s will.
“I cannot,” he said simply.
“You are mine!” she shouted.
“I never was.”
Miguel looked into the eyes of his beloved and saw her beauty, her sorrow, and her worth. He heard the pleas of his mother, but could comprehend only the desperate cry of this one—who had been called many things in human storytelling. She represented humanity itself, a vibrant miracle trapped within its own spell. It was she who had lost the memory of paradise. It was she who had cast a shadow across sublime light. As he looked at her, remembering countless others who had said they loved him while they raged against themselves, his voice softened and he reached for her.
“Your temptations are strong—stronger even than your need for me.” The touch of his hand on her bare arm cooled the fire in her eyes, and he began to see his mother, old again, and trembling from an unfelt chill. She gazed at him, her eyes softening, pleading.
“Don’t worry yourself, Sarita,” he soothed. “I am everything now.”
“And what of me?” she asked, sounding like a child as she shivered in her nightgown, looking at him with wide, fearful eyes. “Do not leave me,” she cried. “Do not abandon me to a world that does not include you.”
“Miguel can’t return. He’s dead.”
“The old ones sometimes brought the dead to life!” Her eyes flashed, and then she lowered her gaze self-consciously. “I will ask. They will know, m’ijo,” she muttered.
“They would not bring back Miguel, your son, even if he agreed to it. He will be a spent dream, attempting to survive within a dying body.”
“So . . . it might be done!” his mother exclaimed. The fire was in her eyes again and he felt the temptation that burned strong behind it.
“Sarita, do not ask this.”
“I will have you back! I will, or—”
“Or what—or you’ll die? Do it now! Come home with me!”
“I am not ready for this bleak surrender!”
“Madre, you don’t listen.”
“Come back, then, and make me hear you,” she cried. “Come back and teach me what I would not learn.”
Miguel sighed. She was using words to bend him, as she always had. It had never been easy to win an argument with her. Sarita had been his teacher, his patient master, and it was hard for him now not to respond as a student. He leaned heavily against the trunk of the tree and turned his attention to the great, glittering sphere that floated above the horizon, welcoming certain dreams and abandoning others.
“Your dream is fading already,” Sarita pressed on, following his gaze. “Such a tragedy. Your sons are not strong enough without you; your apprentices are weak and selfish.”
“It doesn’t matter, Sarita. They are happier than they used to be. The world is happier.” He turned back to her with a look of contentment.
“Who gave birth to you?” she snapped. “Who taught you, and trained you, and prepared you to seduce Mother Earth herself?”
“Tu, Mamá,” he answered quietly. He knew what was coming. It would be hard to say no to her, as it had been hard to say no to the rest of her kind. She counted on that.
“Obey your mother. Time is running out, and I will not return without you.”
“And I ask you to join me, Sarita. There is nothing left for you but physical suffering. I would spare you that.”
“Do not paint me as a victim!”
Miguel regarded her thoughtfully. She was not a victim. She was a woman who abhorred the ravages of age and would not willingly face the end alone. They had collaborated for fifty years now, like two children inventing games—games, in this case, that changed the dreams of human beings. In his absence, there would be no one like her left in the world . . . but did she understand the price his body would pay to come back? Could she imagine the extent of his physical pain? Something stirred in him, and he felt the force of his love begin to shift the dream. He looked into his mother’s eyes and spoke to her, choosing his words carefully.
“If this body lives, Madre, it will need my presence; but it will also need something of the old structure.”
“Was it not I who taught you about the human form?”
“There’s no form left—no belief system.”
“Such things can be retrieved!”
“Who was Miguel, Sarita? How can he be recovered, when there is no answer to that question? There are only memories to point the way. Memories lie, and the lies change with every telling. Memories may give direction, but never truth.”
“They will give me you!”
Miguel looked at his mother, a vision of shifting moods and remembered phrases. She seemed real, warm, and so sweetly unassuming in her nightgown and slippers that he was tempted to change the conversation to everyday things. He wanted to tease her again, to make her laugh as he used to. He wanted to hear her calling him to breakfast, or casually gossiping about people he didn’t know. He wanted to feel her fingertips on his forehead, over his heart, as she gave him her usual morning blessing. This was not an ordinary encounter, however. She had found him somewhere between life and death. She had found him because life had laid a path for her . . . and now, instead of yielding to this fragile dream, she was attempting to manage it.
What could he offer her as consolation for a lost son? How could he calm her fears as he once did? She was fighting him, and it appeared she would not stop. She seemed set for battle, even as she stood unsteadily before him, an old woman in a cotton gown and slippers. She would be the warrior, frail as she was, until it became obvious that there were no more wars to fight. What she hoped to win he could not say, but she was plainly determined.
Miguel offered her a smile. “You have a shopping bag, I see. Was it your intention to put me in it?”
“I might have!”
“It appears to be full already.”
“Here!” she exclaimed, her voice raspy from all the talk. He noticed her renewed enthusiasm and let her talk. “I brought the usual tools of our trade! Perhaps we can do ceremony together . . . just as we used to. Prepare yourself, m’ijo. Make yourself pure, and bring the forces of life toward our task.”
Miguel did nothing. He watched his mother patiently as she bent over her bag of treasures, one hand resting on his knee and his eyes shining with a curious light. He had been a shaman once and knew what was coming. The time was over for tricks, but how could he tell her that? The dream was over for Miguel, the main character of his story, but she would not listen. She would insist on having her son returned to her, even if he was a faintest copy of the truth, living within the most tenuous form.
Sarita began lifting items out of her shopping bag with pride and newfound enthusiasm. Could it be that she and her playmate of old were to invent yet another new game? Could fortune be on her side again? She felt the nearness of her ancestors and smiled. Out of the heavy bag she pulled a small drum and stood it on the ground, carefully placing a stick wrapped in ceremonial red ribbon on top of it. From a tiny pouch she shook out a collection of Aztec shards and lined them up neatly on the skin of the drum, adding to the arrangement a glorious eagle feather. That done, she stacked three gourds at the base of the drum, along with a pot containing charcoal and frankincense. Satisfied that she had laid the groundwork for all that was to come, she reached into the bag for her precious icons, and one by one she placed them on the limb of the tree.
“Now! We start with the Son of the Virgin, of course!” She balanced a small figurine of Jesus on the broad limb of the tree. It was a clay piece, daintily sculpted, showing the Lord holding a lamb. Next, she brought out the Virgin Mary, arms opened in an ascension pose. “There. Mother and Son united,” Sarita said with satisfaction, then muttered a prayer.
Miguel watched in silence as she finished her prayer and hesitated, apparently unsure what to do next. Pursing her lips, she leaned over the bag again. After a few seconds of rummaging noisily, she straightened up, a brass statue of the Buddha sitting heavily in both her hands. She looked at her son, as if expecting a challenge.
“And why not?” she asked. “Is he so proud that he cannot come to the aid of a fellow teacher?”
“He is not proud, although he has good reason to be,” said Miguel calmly, nodding his head toward the lights that flickered above him. “His message still moves the dream of humanity.”
“Precisely so!” The old woman lifted the statue onto the tree, wedging it in the joint of two limbs. Closing her eyes, she mumbled another prayer, presumably to the ultimate bodhisattva himself. With another sigh of satisfaction, she reached into the bag again. This time she found a more delicate statue, wrapped in a silk cloth. It was a Chinese goddess, represented beautifully in pale jade. After a few seconds of consideration, she placed it beside the Virgin.
“A mother hears the cries of her children. She will answer.” Sarita looked at the two women, standing gracefully under the light of the living world, and she smiled. “Yes, a mother answers.”
Next came another brass figure—this one an elaborate version of the war goddess Kali. Miguel wondered how many households his mother had ransacked to fill her bag with fetishes. It was doubtful she knew the names of these goddesses, much less their significance.
“What do you think?” Sarita asked. “She seems like a fighter, but I don’t want her to think that death is our objective.”
