Portals to the Vision Serpent
Chapter Ten
Sybilla lightly questioned PJ about where he had gone with his dad, not wanting him to feel undue pressure. But when he excitedly told her about being on a river, flying through the stars and being in a wet place where people wore no shoes, she decided he must have slept through it all. He dreamt the tale he told her. The thought came later that Gabe might have fed PJ a hallucinogen then dismissed it. That’s something he wouldn’t do.
For a few years Sybilla had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now she knew it had. When that invisible part of her reached out, against her will, to anticipate Gabe, he was not to be found. Emptiness prevailed in the space that he had filled. Her body told her, with a sensation, that she’d landed — with a thud. She was no longer in limbo waiting for something to happen. For all the dread, the anticipated longing for something lost, that had permeated her days, she instead discovered a sense of relief. Sybilla had the unusual experience of becoming re-acquainted with herself. The self that had stepped out of the picture, been put on hold, regained footing. Sybilla’s natural drive and curiosity once again seeped into her life.
She was faced with two things immediately. As the days went by, PJ questioned her frequently about his daddy. She heard the increasing yearning in his little voice as he asked her, “When is Daddy coming home? Why isn’t he here?” What could she tell him when she didn’t even understand herself? So she told PJ that Gabe had been called away on an important trip. While that bought her some time, she knew she’d eventually have to offer him something else to hold onto.
Perhaps more troubling in the moment was how to put food on the table. They lived quite frugally, it being the way Gabe preferred. However, he had been in demand with his handyman services and worked long hours. Gabe was well paid and managed to sock away a decent amount. Sybilla checked on their account, but he’d taken none of it with him. Finding there was enough to cover needs for a few months easily, she sent him a silent prayer of gratitude. In her heart, she knew he’d intentionally laid in provision for them. The future was an unknown worry, but in the moment she had some ease. The mere thought of asking her mother for help made her nauseous. Besides, she’d severed contact. If or when she saw Johns Wake again, she intended to return with successes under her arm.
A week went by, and then late one morning the doorbell rang. Sybilla opened the door to Doña Flora holding a plate covered with a dishtowel.
“Ah, dear one. I brought you some fresh tamales,” the Maya woman offered. “How is our little one?”
Sybilla had not contacted Doña Flora after Gabe left. They shared an unexpressed knowledge that he was no longer in the region. Sybilla thought Doña Flora might be giving her wide berth for any part she may have played in, what Sybilla thought of as, Gabe’s deterioration. But she held no anger toward Doña Flora for something that had been inevitable and uncontrollable. She looked upon the kindly face and invited her in, offering coffee.
PJ had been playing in his room but came rushing out and threw himself into Doña Flora’s ample arms. “My daddy! Do you know where my daddy is?” His voice broke and tears slipped down his cheeks. Sybilla’s own eyes filled, the pain of watching her son’s hurt was too much.
Doña Flora gathered him up. “Little one, it is okay. Let’s sit.” Sybilla took the tamales to the kitchen and returned to find her holding him close on the couch, rocking rhythmically and speaking softly in dialect. It had a calming effect on PJ, and his sobs turned to snuffles.
“But Mama Flora, why doesn’t my daddy come home?” This was the first time Sybilla heard PJ call the midwife by that name, but she didn’t begrudge it. After all, she helped bring him into the world.
“These things are sometimes hard to know. Your papa? He has heard something. This thing he hears calls to him and he goes to find it. He must do this for himself. But, little one, even more he does this for you. It’s because he loves you so much. And he is not gone because he is with you.”
PJ’s eyes got wide. He looked around the room hopefully. “No, he’s not!” he said indignantly, “You’re playing a trick!”
“Your papa always thinks of you with great love. This feeling is a sacred connection. You will know this more in your own way. He is not gone from you. And whenever you think of your papa, he feels it, too. This is alive.”
“Will I see him?”
“He will come to you. You must be patient and wait.”
PJ looked doubtful but seemed to gain some reassurance. His tears dried up, and he yawned. Meanwhile, Sybilla felt disquieted. She didn’t know whether to be upset with Doña Flora for getting PJ’s hopes up, or re-activate her own mixed feelings at the potential of Gabe returning.
They sat silently for a while. PJ shifted, stretched out and lay with his head on Doña Flora’s lap. She stroked his head lightly. In a short time, he fell asleep. Doña Flora looked up at Sybilla searching her face.
“And how are you doing in this time?”
Quietly, so as not to awaken PJ, Sybilla confided about her relief, the guilty excitement, sadness, anger, all the internal conflict. It allowed her peace of mind just to be able to speak what had been whirling inside, bottled up since Gabe left. Finally she whispered her worries about the future, how she would make a go of it.
She finished with, “What exactly did you mean, all the things you told PJ? Do you know where Gabe is?”
“No, I do not know exactly where our Gabe has gone. But he told me about his dream, and I looked. I see a place and some people from the south. Hundreds of years ago such people lived in northern mountains of my country. This is thick jungle. But these people came from somewhere else. They are not like my people. I have heard stories that they crossed the river and left Guatemala. He receives a calling from them. He cannot refuse to answer. If he does, he will die inside. It is true what I say to the little one. His papa does this for him, too. It is important for both of them.”
“Is he coming back?”
“Maybe not in the way you think.”
“What else do you see?” Sybilla was skeptical, and Doña Flora knew it.
“This is all except, the white cloth he wrapped around the little one? They wear this cloth.” She would say no more.
Six months passed with no word from Gabe. Sybilla’s time filled with caring for PJ and planning a future that left no time for nostalgic sentiment — real or imagined. In fact, she preferred to focus on the bad times with Gabe, the frozen clutch her body held walking on eggshells around him, and she found the memory spurred her on. The side of Sybilla that would later be described as shrewd and hard-nosed began to emerge. She consciously sought to re-invent herself from who she was raised to be. And certainly beyond the one who obediently followed Gabe’s lead on their cross-country odyssey, intermittently opening up to the wonders she experienced and contracting when faced with uncertainty.
At night, after she tucked PJ into sleep, Sybilla would sit outside and stare into the desert at its ghostly shapes, her eyes not searching for Gabe as they’d done so many times, but allowing the desert to open a vast inner landscape. Then she’d raise her gaze to the inky sky and find stars winking a message of inspiration. This ritual became her practice, a source of strength. She contemplated the woman she wanted to become and viewed that person as her opposite. She would be, Sybilla decided, someone who was fearless and lived by her passion, whose work was respected and life meaningful — and began the process of stepping into that potential. She kept the vision to herself — held it close — away from others who would think it romantically unrealistic and lofty. But who did she have to tell anyway? She’d cut off her family without regrets and had made no close friends. Gabe was gone, and he was the one who would have understood. But then it was quite likely because he’d vanished without a trace that her determination was showing itself, having been there all along — waiting patiently.
Sybilla was touched, not by ambition, but by the thought of making a difference. She paid attention when Gabe had spoken of glorious things he saw in his travels, and the worst injustices. She’d heard Doña Flora when she bemoaned the plight of her people and what was being done to their land in the name of progress, really just plain greed. Sybilla wanted to document such things, wake people up, show them what’s important. Just like she was awakened when Gabe came into her life. She did thank him silently for that but didn’t dwell too much on the important role he’d played, aside from being PJ’s father. If she did, then the worry she’d roughly cast aside would cozy up to her and find a tight companion, and the hollow feeling she’d tucked into a hidden pocket would discover a way out. So she busied herself instead with how to provide for PJ and, at the same time, live up to her vision. Sybilla found it a challenge to juggle everything and give PJ the care he needed. At the end of most days she just felt exhausted, until she could take a breath of the night sky to fortify herself for the next day.
Sybilla began to consciously shed the Georgia inflections in her speaking patterns. She mused that being seen as a stereotypical Southern belle would do nothing to help her career goals. She wasn’t able to do anything about her striking patrician features or petite frame. She supposed her green eyes to be an asset in any world, unless she wanted to go unnoticed. Just as Sybilla was undergoing a metamorphosis so was the face of Mother Lode. Long the home of artisans, a smattering of Native people, and a plethora of off-beat characters who fit in nowhere else, a well-read national magazine had run a story on the small town in the desert. They called it a mecca for artists and new thinkers — the “Village” of the Southwest, likening it to the one in New York City. Opportunists opened galleries, quick to see an advantage. Trendy cafes sprung up which, in turn, attracted curiosity seekers from out of town — and people with means who bought art. Some of those visitors stayed and took up residence. The locals grumbled about interlopers but found they prospered in the wake of the intrusion. Sybilla was one of them.
After spending long hours poring over hundreds of black and white images she’d shot over the last few years, she selected the most expressive for her portfolio. It took but a few inquiries to get accepted at a small tasteful gallery just off the main street, an area becoming known as the arts district. Sybilla felt she’d fallen into a wellspring after learning the owner also had two larger galleries. If she sold well in Mother Lode, then she was promised placement in Tucson and Santa Fe. Investing some of her dwindling funds in mats and simple frames, she also wrote prose, a short tale for each image, sensing people would be more likely to take her work home if they connected with it. She convinced the gallery owner to display the descriptive passage beside each piece. Her intuition served her well.
A part-time job opened at the town newspaper, and Sybilla wrangled for the post. She took it on, seeing the chance to dip her toe, somewhat safely, into the waters she sought as her lifework. Her task was to write a weekly human-interest column and to shoot any accompanying photographs. She wrote about the old-timer who lived half the year on the edge of town; the rest of the time he vanished into the Bradshaw Mountains to live alone in a tent and pan for gold. He wouldn’t say where his claims were. Then there was the couple with a rescue sanctuary for burros, and a dowser who was known to have a sixth sense about finding water sources in dry land, as well as lost objects. Between penning the column and keeping the galleries stocked, Sybilla found that, while she wasn’t getting rich, she was able to eke out a living. When she stopped to exhale, she looked back with satisfaction to see how far she’d come from the girl she’d been. Small successes built upon each other. And before she realized it a year had passed since Gabe had gone.
Sybilla didn’t feel successful where PJ was concerned though. She was lucky she could work at home. Even so, she was guilt ridden about not spending more time with him. There was always some deadline. I’m doing all I can, she told herself. And he’s such a quiet child and has his own inner world. One day she recognized just how much PJ had started resembling Gabe, had taken on some of his mannerisms, and it gave her painful pause. Why he looks just what Gabe must have at his age! There were times when he gazed so intensely at her with those ice-blue eyes that her breath would catch; she’d see Gabe all over again. How was it that her child could see into her soul? More than once she’d take a break to check on him and find him talking to thin air, immersed in a conversation — and she worried. She knew that lonely children made up playmates. Soon, he would enter pre-school, but Sybilla didn’t anticipate things would change. PJ already shied away from the neighborhood kids. The only person he lit up for was Doña Flora who still came by regularly. Truth be told, Doña Flora was the only person Sybilla felt close to. Over the last months she’d become family, providing a sounding board and childcare that was increasingly needed. It was she who Sybilla consulted about her son.
One morning Doña Flora stopped by with fresh tamales, the comfort food PJ craved on a weekly basis. He grabbed one on his way out to play. Sybilla brought coffee over to the kitchen table and watched her load it up with sugar. Sybilla liked her own coffee strong and black. She learned to provide a sugar bowl and a little pitcher of water for her guest, so that she could dilute it to her liking.
Stirring thoughtfully, Doña Flora gazed silently at the dark liquid. Sybilla joined her in silence, sipping her coffee, watching PJ sitting on the ground out where Gabe’s sanctuary used to be. He was gesturing into the air. When the midwife finally raised her eyes, they were filled with sadness.
“What’s wrong, Doña Flora?” Sybilla couldn’t bring herself to drop the title of respect, even though her friend had asked her months ago.
“I have very bad news from my home. Many bad things are happening,” she went on, shaking her head slowly, “I say these things can’t be true. They are supposed to end with this new government in my country since five years ago. There are too many stories coming!”
Sybilla urged her on with a dip of her head. She knew that Doña Flora fled from the Guatemala highlands in the mid-1980s with some family members after government soldiers cut a swathe through Maya villages, massacring large numbers. She was particularly marked due to her status in the village as a healer and midwife; her safety was in peril, even though she went underground while still in the region. Fortunately, Doña Flora had a cousin who emigrated some years prior, eventually settling in Arizona and becoming a citizen. He sponsored her when she sought political asylum for herself and the few family members who accompanied her.
“I got a letter from my sister. A month it takes to get here! And she say that a spiritual leader in the next village is killed! That some men come in the night and drag him from his home! So terrible I cannot tell you! I know this old man,” tears came into her eyes, “He is a good, kind man and healed many people. He helped my father when even my mother could not help. And it is said that three healers are missing from other places not so far from there! People are scared in their own homes, my sister say. People think it is either the government or the new church that is coming into these areas! Maybe they are the same people. Ah, you see that these spiritual leaders, these healers, have the trust of the people, powers that those bad ones want. What can I do? I am here.”
Sybilla felt the weight of Doña Flora’s distress. It certainly put her own concerns in perspective considering what she just heard. When she opened the door to Doña Flora, she’d felt relief and had planned to speak to her about PJ. He said Gabe was appearing to him in his dreams. And she’d experienced odd occurrences herself that she couldn’t explain. Several times she’d heard Gabe’s voice, unintelligible snatches rising slightly above the wind, or humming along just above the music from the radio. It was easy enough to dismiss as her imagination, except it was happening too frequently. Then there was PJ and his nighttime stories. But after hearing Doña Flora’s news from her homeland, she decided to raise her worries another time.
“And you know there are other things. In the north they are logging the rainforest and these people go in and look for oil. I think these are greedy people. They don’t think what they are doing to the Mother Earth, to the world. How can they not know? The animals and birds are disappearing! The trees and plants are gone! So many medicines come from these! All these things make me sad. I ask always, what can I do?” Doña Flora ended her monologue, not conceding defeat, but entreating the forces that guide her for answers.
A possibility popped into Sybilla’s head. But it seemed so insignificant she hesitated to voice it, especially since it could appear self-serving in the face of Doña Flora’s anguish. Such subject matter was exactly the kind of topic Sybilla hoped to cover on a regular basis, not to say she didn’t appreciate the human-interest stories she pursued. She just wanted more dramatic ones. Her most secret self held up Rachel Carson and Margaret Bourke-White as role models. She intended to put herself in places where she could pull off exposés, be on the front lines — eventually anyway — and catapult change.
“I have an idea,” Sybilla offered haltingly, “Why don’t I write a column on you and how you came to be here, how some of these things are still going on? More people need to know these things are happening. I didn’t know until you told me your story. It could be a human rights and environmental piece.”
Doña Flora raised her eyebrows, then broke into a broad smile. “Yes, this is a thing we will do.”
Sybilla’s excitement knew no bounds. Somehow she sensed this was her break. She overrode a gnawing doubt. How was she going to convince Mr. Devry, her editor, to run this story? She didn’t have license to include any political statements in her column or do any hard reporting.
©2013 Carla Woody. All rights reserved worldwide. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be directed to: Kenosis Press, P.O. Box 10441, Prescott, Arizona 86304. Email: info@kenosis.net.
Find links to all chapters as they are published in the Table of Contents below.
Table of Contents
Preston
Sybilla
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Preston
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Carla Woody:
Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage. Read in Illumination Book Chapters.
Calling Our Spirits Home: Gateways to Full Consciousness. Read in Illumination Book Chapters.
Navigating Your Lifepath: Reclaiming Your Self, Recapturing Your Vision. A Program to Revolutionize Your Life. Find in Illumination Book Chapters.
