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I lie on the grass and listen to the river inside me. It pulses and churns, surges up against the clenched rock of my heart until finally it spurts from my head in a dark jet. Behind, the clouds swoop and dive on paper wings, the palace walls grow taller, brick by brick, till they rise beyond the painting's edge. The river is deep now and still, an opaque lake filled with blue fish. But look, the ground tilts, the green touch-me-not plants angle away from my body. I am falling. The lake cups its liquid fingers for me, the fish glint like light on ice. Evening. The river pebbles are newborn pearls. The water rises. I am disappearing, my body rippling into circles. Legs, waist, armpits. My hair floats upward, a skein of melting silk. I give my face to the river, the lines of my forehead, my palms. When the last cell has dissolved, the last cry of the lake-birds, I will, once more, hear the river inside.  The tree grows out of my navel. Black as snakeskin, it slithers upward, away from my voice. Spreads across the entire morning, its leaf-tongues drinking the light. It bores its roots into my belly till I can no longer tell them from my dry, gnarled veins. And when it is sure I will never forget the pain of its birthing, it parts its branches so I can see, far in that ocean of green, a figure, tiny and perfect, pale as ivory, leaning on his elbow. He looks down and I know that mouth, those eyes. Mine. I raise my arm. I am calling loud as I can. He gazes into the distance, the bright, rippling air. It is clear he sees, hears nothing. I continue to call. The tree grows and grows into the world between us.
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Excerpted from Leaving Yuba City by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Copyright © 1997 by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday, a division of the Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. |
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