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.”
“You may see that there are greater things to battle than death.”
Sarita looked at her son as if seeking comprehension. He met her look, and she felt more confusion than comfort. Looking quickly away, she reached for the nylon bag and shook it. There was something left at the bottom. Grabbing it, she brought it out with a shrug and a sigh. It was his childhood plastic figure of Popeye, pipe in mouth and both biceps bulging. This she had found in his dresser drawer.
“Now we can talk!” exclaimed her son, laughing. “I am what I am!”
Sarita smiled with satisfaction. The meaning of this silly item eluded her, but she had been right to suspect that it would please him. She withdrew her withered hands and tugged on her cotton gown nervously. What else? Feeling around for a pocket, she withdrew a necklace: a silver chain holding a star of David. This she hung from a leafy twig, and gave it a spin. Then she took the gold crucifix from around her neck and draped it over the same twig. The two charms spun and gleamed in the surreal light, sending little sparks of fire into the upper branches of the tree. “Old gods, young gods. How are they different?” she whispered.
“Why bother with gods at all?” her son asked. “Why call on the saints and the ancestors? Why bring any of them to a conference between mother and son?”
“Because we need help.”
“You need faith—but not in them.”
“Then . . . in what?”
“Is it possible you’re asking me this?”
“I have great faith in you, my lamb.”
“Not in me. Faith in you. It’s what brought you here, guided you to me. Faith is life itself, breathing through matter and moving us both.”
“You are not moving at all.”
“Am I not? Haven’t I been moved already?” He gave his mother a look of resignation, shaking his head. What more could he tell her?
“M’ijo,” his mother said softly, clearly. “I will have you return to me, or I will die trying.”
Yes, I see that, he reflected. Now, however, she was alive. Life still pushed through her, invigorating an old body with an unmistakable will. If she were to revitalize him, she would need that will to become even stronger, for he had slipped past her emotional reach. She would need total faith, which could come only from an awareness that presently eluded her. Yes, even Mother Sarita, sage and healer, had revelations waiting . . . and a journey ahead of her, too long postponed.
“You will not die today, Sarita,” he stated at last. “Nor, apparently, will I.”
He must take this chance to attend to her. His mother had always been ready to fight for him. She had always defended his right to be who he was and to achieve what he wanted. This time she was defending his right to live. As he saw the light come back into his mother’s face, the face that had graced him over the years with a thousand expressions of love and pride, his imagination was set alight. He would give Sarita a mission, if she felt she needed one, and give the warrior one last battle to fight. While he still could, he would set her on a journey far more important than its intended destination.
“You say you will do anything?” her son asked.
“Yes!”
“Even if it means following instructions?”
Sarita could feel her heart beat faster. “My angel, in this peculiar world, you are the teacher,” she said. “I will gladly take your instructions.”
Okay, now who was teasing whom? Miguel thought wryly. Even a dying man had to laugh. And he was surely dying . . . the process had begun. He could see that Sarita had come to him as an impassioned force of life; and in a dream made of memory and waning desires, only life could stop that process.
“Not my instructions, Madre,” he said, his smile brimming with love. “In my peculiar world, the outcome makes no difference. In someone else’s world it is everything.” He looked past her, to something in the distance.
“What do you—” she began. “Someone else?”
Sarita’s eyes followed his gaze to a point along the far horizon. “What is this?” she asked. “Another tree?”
Far from this gleaming place they occupied, on another hill in a similar landscape, loomed an enormous tree. She hadn’t noticed it until this moment. It was in every way the same as this one, the one that held her son on its noble branches. It was . . .
“A copy,” he informed her.
“And who sits there? A copy of my son?”
“An impostor of another kind. The one who lives in that tree knows the science of illusion. Speak to that one, Mother.”
Sarita looked across desolation to the tree in the distance. It was obscured by shadow, but radiant with color, as this one was. Nothing moved, however. Its leaves did not flutter, and nothing shone. Shadows did not play with flickering rays of light. There seemed to be no living thing among its branches. She was mesmerized. It took a deliberate act of will to look away and return her attention to her son, there in his Tree of Life, where he sat silhouetted against the brilliant colors of Earth.
“It is not more illusion I want. It is Miguel.”
“Your journey begins there, Sarita,” Miguel advised, taking another glance at the tree in the distance. Everything perceived was reflection, illusion. She would now have the chance to make her choices based on that awareness. “If you must know how to bring back your son, there lies your first instruction. As always, believe nothing you hear, but listen.”
He plucked another apple from the branch above him and began polishing it on the hem of his hospital gown. He took a hearty bite, and as he began to chew, sweet juice streaming down his chin, he lifted his eyes to the black sky and grinned with profound delight at the vision of a planet blazing with dreams. His mother would prove herself adept, he had no doubt. Her awareness would grow with every challenge. She would put her considerable wisdom to use and consult the ancestors, as she always had. She would deal with the one who rules the world of reflections—a world he had left far behind—and, for a while at least, she would forget the pain that springs from a mother’s intolerable fear. He winked at her cheerfully and readied himself to follow life, wherever it led.
Sarita smiled back, confident now as she felt the power of her intent moving time and circumstance forward. She must stay in her son’s dream, no matter what. Here, she could persuade him. Here, he would feel the force of her will. In her mind, she had made her case well, and for now he was conceding. He was pointing the way to a solution, however dubious it appeared to her; and this was progress. She would indulge him, of course. She would try things his way . . . until his way became her way.
Sarita set her eyes on the horizon. No one could face what lay ahead but her, however many hours her family might spend on music and prayer. She turned from Miguel without another word, picking up her empty bag, and began walking again, this time toward whatever lurked in the shade of the great tree in the distance.
There was no wind. In this still landscape, canopied by a storm-threatened sky, there was no sound. She wondered why she could no longer hear the relentless roll-and-rock that seemed to play continuously in her son’s head. Roll-and-rock? Rock-and-roll? Whatever, it was gone now. She was alone, for now. She swung her nylon bag lightly, in a gesture of defiance against doubt. Soon this strange escapade would be over.