Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

“Is Mama Iroko speaking to you?”

He turned his head to her. “Mama Iroko?”

“It’s a ceiba, Ran. In Cuba, they’re considered sacred. In Palo, the leaves are used to make a tea that’s said to open the third eye.” She put her finger in her book and leaned against the trunk, gazing up with him.

“You look at this and have to wonder if humans really are the peak of life on earth,” Ran said.

“You thought we were?” She smiled. “Think of what it does. It turns sunlight into life. It takes what’s dead out of the earth and converts it back to life. It harms nothing, kills nothing.”

“It isn’t conscious, though.”

“Who says? Close your eyes.” She put her hand lightly over them. “Don’t you feel its awareness of us? We’re like this little mosquito whine of energy on its periphery, but what it’s mainly conscious of is the sun. It’s like a mighty being deep in contemplation of that fundamental source. And it takes that energy and lives on it and turns it into life. Can we do that? No, Ran, we aren’t the top.”

“That’s sounding kind of New Age, Shan.”

She laughed. “No, baby, what you hear is Africa. Africa’s as Old Age as it gets.”

“I’d like to go there. I’ve always felt some sort of tug.”

“Maybe it’s ancestral.”

Ran smiled, thinking he was supposed to.

She did not smile back.

“You’re suggesting I’m part black?” he asked with skeptical amusement.

“I’m not suggesting it; it’s true. We all are. The difference is, my ancestors left Africa two hundred fifty, three hundred years ago; yours, sixty thousand, give or take.”

“Is that true?”

“Sure, don’t you know that? You think white people evolved separately in Europe from white European apes? No, Ran. Humanity evolved one time, in Africa, and then spread out. Geneticists think there was a single migration around sixty-five thousand years ago. A band of hunter-gatherers, probably no more than a couple hundred of them, followed a coastal route to India. They or their descendants spread into Southeast Asia and eventually reached Australia fifty thousand years ago. Offshoots of that wave went northeast to China and Japan, over the land bridge to North America—they became the Indians—and westward into northern Europe. The colder it got, the less sun they saw, the lighter their skins became to absorb vitamin D. Archaeologists think there were multiple migrations, but whether there was one or twenty, if you trace the family tree back far enough, we’re all black Africans.”

“Damn, I never knew this. How do they know?”

“Genetic markers in the blood of populations on the old migration routes. Everyone alive on earth today has the same piece of mitochondrial DNA, inherited from the same woman.”

“The same woman?”

“The same black woman, actually. They call her ‘Mitochondrial Eve.’ She lived two hundred thousand years ago.”

He took this in. “So it’s all kind of silly, isn’t it, this whole racial business?”

Shanté just looked at him and shook her head and laughed, and it was different now, it was her old, rich, easy laugh with all its different colors, all its different notes.

Ran turned on his side and propped his head. “So, tell the truth, Shanté, this hoodoo stuff, this Congo stuff you’re into—is it really real?”

“Naw,” she said, reverting to the Killdeer accent now herself. “I left singing, spent five years in Africa, gave up sex for something unreal—is that what you think?” Her smile was more incredulous than fazed.

Ransom blinked. “What did your mother think of it?”

“Oh, you know, Ran, Mama had no truck with roots. She and Reverend Satterwhite—you remember Reverend Satterwhite?”

“Sure, I do.”

“To them, roots were devil’s work, but those ladies in our church, the ones in the big feathered hats? When they got worked up on Sunday morning and fell down in the aisles and spoke in tongues, they were doing exactly what I saw the ngangas in Boma do, only, in Zaire, they were channeling the nkisis, the ancestors; here, it’s the Holy Ghost. It’s a newer variation on an old theme, though. Forty percent of the slaves who came through Charleston and New Orleans were Congolese. They brought their knowledge and traditions with them, and they spread all over the Americas and the Caribbean. In Jamaica, it turned into Obeah; in Brazil, Umbanda; in Cuba, Palo Monte and Mayombe. Here, in the U.S., it turned into Conjure, and another branch runs straight into the black Spiritual and Pentecostal churches, and Mama was part of that, whether she understood or liked the fact or no, and she passed it to me.”

“I wonder why I dreamed of her.”

“I’ll tell you why. She was telling you to get your shit together.”

He lay back down. “It’s funny, Shan, when I crashed, I thought I was going to die. It didn’t hurt, though. It didn’t feel the least bit strange. I used to be afraid of dying; now I’m not. What do you suppose that means?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“It’s good, though, right?”

Shanté didn’t answer, and Ran was careful not to look at her, but he could feel her lingering study, a warmth against his face.

“They got your car out of the ditch,” she said after a silence. “It’s pretty banged up, but it runs. They don’t think the frame is bent.”

“You know I only bought it yesterday? I sold Daddy’s Thunderbird to get the goddamn thing for Claire.”

“I called her, Ran.”

He let a beat elapse. “And…?”

“She’s relieved you’re okay.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Meaning what?”

“Meaning, frankly, Shan, I have a hard time imagining Claire losing sleep worrying how or where I am.”

“She said you took a gun out of the house.”

Ran pondered this remark. “So, what, she’s scared? Is that what she said?”

“Why would Claire be scared?” Shanté’s expression challenged him, direct, severe, but Ransom didn’t answer. “Truthfully, Ran, I think Claire’s more concerned about you doing something to yourself. Is that something you’re considering?”

“No.” He clenched his jaw and looked away.

“You’re sure?”

“I don’t have the gun, Shanté.”

She held his stare, not cowed, not reassured.

“Sounds like Claire told you quite a bit,” he said.