Being in Dreaming: Chapter 03.

Being in Dreaming ©1991 by Florinda Donner.

Chapter 03.

It was impossible for me to determine whether the picnic had been a dream, or had actually taken place.

I was incapable of remembering, in a sequential order, all the events I had participated in from the moment I fell asleep on the bed in the healing room.

My next clear recollection was that I found myself talking with Delia at the table in that same room.

Familiar with such lapses of memory which used to occur in my childhood, I did not at first make much of this discrepancy.

As a child, eager to play, I would often get out of my bed half asleep and sneak out of my house through the window grill. Many times, I did indeed wake up in the plaza, playing with other children who were not put to bed as early as I had been.

There was no doubt in my mind that the picnic had been real, although I could not immediately place it in a time sequence.

I tried to think and to reconstruct the events, but it frightened me to bring forth the idea of my childhood memory lapses.

Somehow, I was reluctant to ask Delia about her friends, and she did not volunteer any information either.

However, I did ask about the healing session, which I knew had been a dream.

I began cautiously by saying, "I had such an elaborate dream about a healer. Not only did she tell me her name, but she also assured me that she had made all my nightmares vanish."

Delia, her tone clearly revealing her displeasure, stated, "It was not a dream."

She stared at me with an intensity that made me want to fidget and move away. Delia went on, saying, "The healer did tell you her name, and she certainly did cure you from your sleep maladies."

I insisted, "But it was a dream. In my dream, the healer was the size of a child. She could not have been real."

Delia reached for the glass of water on the table, but she did not drink. She turned it around, on and on, without spilling a drop.

Then she looked at me with glittering eyes, and said, "The healer gave you the impression of being little, that is all."

Delia nodded to herself as though the words had just occurred to her, and as if she had found them satisfactory.

She sipped her water with slow, slurping noises, and her eyes grew soft and reflective.

Delia said, "She had to be little in order to cure you."

I asked, "She had to be little? You mean I only saw her as being little?"

Delia nodded repeatedly, then leaning toward me she whispered, "You see, you were dreaming. Yet it was not a dream.

"The healer really came to you and cured you, but you were not in the place in which you are now."

I objected, "Come on, Delia. What are you talking about? I know it was a dream. I am always totally aware that I am dreaming, even though the dreams are completely real to me. That is my malady, remember?"

Delia proposed, "Maybe now that she has cured you, it is no longer your malady but your talent."

She smiled and said, "But going back to your question, the healer had to be small, like a child, because you were quite young when your nightmares first began."

Her statement was so outlandish, I could not even laugh. I asked facetiously, "And now I am cured?"

Delia assured me, "You are. In dreaming, cures are accomplished with great ease, almost effortlessly. What is difficult is to make people dream."

I asked with a voice harsher than I had intended, "Difficult? Everybody has dreams. We all have to sleep, do we not?"

Delia rolled her eyes derisively to the ceiling, then gazed at me and said, "Those are not the dreams I am talking about.

"Those are ordinary dreams. Dreaming has purpose. Ordinary dreams do not."

I emphatically disagreed with her, and said, "They certainly do!"

I then went into a lengthy diatribe about the psychological importance of dreams. I cited works on psychology, philosophy, and art.

Delia was not in the least impressed with my knowledge.

She agreed with me that ordinary dreams must indeed help maintain the mental health of individuals, but she insisted that she was not concerned with that.

She reiterated, "Dreaming has a purpose. Ordinary dreams do not."

I said condescendingly, "What purpose, Delia?"

She turned her head sideways, as if she wanted to hide her face from me.

An instant later she looked back at me. Something cold and detached showed itself in her eyes, and the change of expression was altogether so ruthless that I was frightened.

Delia declared, "Dreaming always has a practical purpose. It serves the dreamer in simple or intricate ways.

"It has served you to get rid of your sleeping maladies.

"It served the witches at the picnic to know your essence.

"It served me to screen myself out of the awareness of the immigration guard patrol asking to see your tourist card."

I mumbled, "I am trying to understand what you are saying, Delia."

Then I asked forcefully, "Do you mean that you people can hypnotize others against their wills?"

"Call it that if you wish," she said.

On her face was a look of calm indifference that bore little sympathy as she said, "What you can not see yet is that you, yourself, can enter quite effortlessly into what you would call a hypnotic state.

"We call it dreaming; a dream that is not a dream; a dream where we can do nearly anything our hearts desire."

Delia almost made sense to me, but I had no words with which to express my thoughts and my feelings.

I stared at her, baffled.

Suddenly, I remembered an event from my adolescence.

When I was finally allowed driving lessons in my father's jeep, I surprised my family by showing them that I already knew how to shift. I had been doing it for years in my dreams.

With an assurance that was even baffling to me, on my first venture I took the jeep on the old road from Caracas to La Guayra, the port by the sea.

I deliberated whether I should tell Delia about this episode, but instead I asked her about the healer's size.

Delia said, "She is not a tall woman, but neither is she as small as you saw her.

"In her healing dream, she projected her smallness for your benefit, and in doing so, she was small.

"That is the nature of magic. You have to be what you want to give the impression of."

The thought that they all worked in a circus, and that they were part of some magic show had passed my mind at various times. I believed it would explain so many things about them.

I asked Delia expectantly, "Is she a magician?"

"No," Delia said. "She is not a magician. She is a sorceress."

Delia gazed at me so scornfully I was ashamed of my question.

She gazed at me pointedly and explained, "Magicians are in a show. Sorcerers are in the world without being part of the world."

She was silent for a long time, then a sigh escaped her lips. She asked, "Would you like to see Esperanza now?"

I eagerly said, "Yes. I would like that very much."

The possibility that the healer had been real and not a dream made my head spin.

I did not quite believe Delia, and yet I wanted to believe her in the worst way. My thoughts ran wild.

Suddenly I realized that I had not mentioned to Delia that the healer of my dream had told me her name was Esperanza.

I was so absorbed in my thoughts I failed to notice that Delia as speaking.

I said, "I am sorry, but what did you say?"

Delia told me, "The only way you can make sense of all this is to call back dreaming."

Laughing softly, she waved her hand as she were signaling someone to come.

Her words were of no importance to me. I was already pondering another train of thought.

Esperanza was real, and I was certain she was going to clarify everything for me. Besides, she had not been at the picnic. And she had not treated me as abominably as all the other women had.

I harbored the vague hope that Esperanza had liked me, and this thought somehow restored my confidence.

To disguise my feelings from Delia, I told her that I was anxious to see the healer.

I said, "I would like to thank her, and of course, pay her for all she did for me."

Delia stated, "It is already paid."

The mocking glint in her eyes easily revealed that she was privy to my thoughts.

I asked in an involuntarily high-pitched voice, "What do you mean it is already paid? Who paid for it?"

"It is hard to explain," Delia began with a distant kindness that put me momentarily at ease.

She continued, "It all began at your friend's party in Nogales. I noticed you instantly."

I was eager to hear some compliment on my tasteful and carefully chosen wardrobe, and I asked expectantly, "You did?"

There was an uncomfortable silence. I could not see Delia's eyes, veiled under her half-closed lids.

There was something quiet yet oddly disturbing about her voice as she said that what she had noticed about me was that every time I had to talk to my friend's grandmother, I seemed to be absentminded as if I were asleep.

I responded, "Absentminded is putting it mildly. You have no idea what I went through and what I had to do to convince that old lady that I was not the devil incarnate."

Delia seemed not to have heard me as she said, "I knew in a flash that you had great facility to dream.

"So I followed you around through the house and saw you in action.

"You were not fully aware of what you were doing or saying. And yet you were doing fine; talking and laughing, and lying your head off to be liked."

I asked in jest but betraying my hurt, "Are you calling me a liar?"

I felt an impulse to get angry, so I stared at the pitcher of water on the table until the threatening feeling had passed.

Delia pronounced rather pompously, "I would not dare call you a liar. I would call you a dreamer."

Delia's eyes sparkled with mirth and genial malice, but there was a heavy solemnity in her voice as she said, "The sorcerers who reared me told me that it does not matter what one may say as long as one has the power to say it."

Her voice conveyed such enthusiasm and approval, that I was sure someone was behind one of the doors listening to us.

She continued, "And the way to get that power, is from dreaming.

"You do not know this because you do it so naturally, but when you are in a pinch, your mind goes instantly into dreaming."

In order to change the subject I asked, "Were you reared by sorcerers, Delia?"

She declared, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "Of course I was."

"Were your parents sorcerers?"

"Oh, no," she said and chuckled. "The sorcerers found me one day and reared me from then on."

"How old were you? Were you a child?"

Delia laughed, as if with my question I had reached the height of humor.

She said, "No, I was not a child. I was perhaps your age when they found me and began to rear me."

"What do you mean they began to rear you?"

Delia gazed at me but without focusing her eyes on me. For a moment I thought she had not heard me or, if she had, that she was not going to answer me.

I repeated my question.

She only shrugged and smiled. But then she said, "The sorcerers reared me as one rears a child. It does not matter how old you are. In their world, you are a child."

Suddenly afraid we might be overheard, I glanced over my shoulder, and whispered, "Who are these sorcerers, Delia?"

"That is a very tough question," she mused. "At the moment, I can not even begin to answer it.

"All I can tell you about them is that they are the ones who said to me that one should never lie to be believed."

I asked, "Why should one lie then?"

Delia promptly retorted, "For the sheer pleasure of it,"

She then rose from the chair, and walked toward the door that led to the yard.

Before stepping outside, she turned and with a grin on her face asked, "Do you know the saying, 'If you are not lying to be believed, you can say anything you want, regardless of what anybody thinks of you.'"

"I have never heard such a saying."

I suspected she had made it up. It had her stamp.

I added primly, "Besides, I do not understand what you are trying to say."

She looked sidelong at me through the strands of her black hair and said, "I am sure you do."

Gesturing with her chin, she motioned me to follow her. "Let us go and see Esperanza now."

I jumped up and dashed after her, only to come to an abrupt halt by the door.

Momentarily blinded by the brightness outside, I stood there, wondering what had happened.

It seemed that no time had elapsed since I had run after Mr. Flores across the field. The sun, as it had been then, was still at the zenith.

I caught a glimpse of Delia's red skirt as she turned a corner.

I rushed after her across a stone archway that led to a most enchanting patio.

At first I saw nothing; so strong was the contrast between the dazzling sunlight and the intense shadows of the patio.

Breathlessly, I simply stood there, perfectly still, inhaling the humid air. It was fragrant with the scent of orange blossoms, honeysuckle, and sweet peas.

The sweet peas hung like a brightly colored tapestry amidst the foliage of trees, shrubs, and ferns. They climbed up strings that seemed to be suspended from the sky.

The healer I had seen before in my dream was sitting on a rocking chair in the middle of the patio.

She was much older than Delia and the women at the picnic, although how I knew this, I could not say.

She was rocking to and fro with an air of dreamy abandon.

I felt an anguishing pain that gripped my whole being, for I had the irrational certainty that her rocking movement was taking her farther and farther away from me.

A wave of agony and an indescribable loneliness engulfed me as I kept staring at her.

I wanted to cross the patio and hold her, but something about the patio's dark tiles, which were laid out in a most intricate pattern, held my feet in place.

"Esperanza," I finally managed to whisper in a voice so feeble it was barely audible even to myself.

She opened her eyes and smiled quite without surprise as if she had been expecting me.

She rose and walked toward me.

She was not the size of a child, but about my height; five feet and two inches.

She was thin and fragile-looking, yet exuded a vitality that made me feel puny and shrunken.

She sincerely voiced, "How happy I am to see you again."

She motioned me to grab one of the rush chairs and sit beside her.

As I looked about me, I discovered the other women, including Delia.

They were sitting on rush chairs, half hidden by shrubs and trees. And they, too, were watching me curiously.

Some of them smiled, while the others kept on eating tamales from the plates on their laps.

In the shady, green light of the patio, and in spite of the mundane task of eating, the women appeared insubstantial and imaginary.

Each one of them was unnaturally vivid without being distinct.

They seemed to have absorbed the patio's greenish light, which had settled all around us like a transparent fog.

The awesome but fleeting idea crossed my mind that I was in a house populated by ghosts.

Esperanza asked me, "Would you like to eat something? Delia has made the most delicious food you can imagine."

I murmured, "No, thank you." in a voice that did not sound like my own.

Seeing her questioning expression, I added feebly, "I am not hungry."

I was so nervous and agitated that even if I had been starving I would not have been able to swallow a bite.

Esperanza must have sensed my fear. She leaned toward me, patted my arm reassuringly, and asked, "What is it that you want to know?"

I blurted out, "I thought I had seen you in a dream." Then I noticed the laughter in her eyes, and I added, "Am I dreaming now?"

Esperanza replied enunciating her words slowly and precisely, "You are, but you are not asleep."

"How can I be dreaming and not be asleep?"

Esperanza explained, "Some women can do that with great ease. They can be dreaming and not be asleep.

"You are one of those women. Others have to work a lifetime to accomplish that."

I sensed a tinge of admiration in her voice, yet I was not in the least flattered.

On the contrary. I was more worried than ever.

I insisted, "But how is it possible to dream without sleeping?"

Esperanza pronounced, "If I explain to you how it is possible, you will not understand it. Take my word on this. It is much better to postpone the explanations for the time being."

Again she patted my arm, and a gentle smile lit up her face as she said, "For the moment it is enough for you to know that, for you, I am the one who brings dreams."

I did not think it was enough, but I did not dare to tell her so.

Instead, I asked her, "Was I awake when you cured me of my nightmares? And was I dreaming when I sat outside in the field with Delia and all the others?"

Esperanza regarded me for a long moment then nodded sagely, as if she had decided to reveal some monumental truth. "You are too dumb to see the mystery of what we do."

She said this so matter-of-factly and so nonjudgmentally that it did not occur to me to take offense, or to attempt any kind of rebuttal.

I pleaded eagerly, "But you could make me see it, could you not?"

The other women giggled. It was not a mocking sound, but rather was a murmuring that echoed all around me like a muffled chorus.

And the sound seemed to come not only from the women, but from the shadows of the patio.

And more than a giggle, it seemed to whisper a delicate warning that not only made me lose my thrust, but erased my troubling doubts and my nagging desire to know.

And then I knew, without a shadow of doubt, that I had been awake and dreaming both times.

It was a knowledge that I could not explain, however. It was something beyond words.

Yet, after a few moments, I felt compelled to dissect my realization, and to put it all into some kind of logical framework.

Esperanza regarded me with apparent pleasure.

Then she said, "I am going to explain to you who we are and what we do."

Esperanza prefaced her elucidation with an admonition. She warned me that whatever she had to tell me was not easy to believe. Therefore, I had to suspend judgment and hear her out without interruptions and without questions.

She asked, "Can you do that?"

I shot back a word, "Naturally."

Esperanza was silent for a moment. Her eyes appraised me thoughtfully.

She must have sensed my uncertainty and the question that was about to burst from my lips.

She explained, "It is not that I do not want to answer your questions. It is rather that at this time it will be impossible for you to understand the answers."

I nodded, but not in agreement. I was afraid that if so much as a peep came out of me she would stop talking altogether.

In a voice that was but a soft murmur, she told me something that was both incredible and fascinating.

She said that she was the spiritual descendant of sorcerers who lived in the valley of Oaxaca millennia before the Spanish conquest.

Esperanza was silent for a long time.

Her eyes fixed on the bright, multicolored, sweet peas, and her gaze seemed to reach nostalgically into the past.

Esperanza continued, "As it is for me, the part of those sorcerers' activities pertinent to you is called dreaming."

"Those sorcerers were men and women who possessed extraordinary dreaming powers, and performed acts that defied the imagination."

Hugging my knees, I listened to her.

Esperanza was a brilliant raconteuse and a most gifted mimic. Her face changed with each turn of her explanation.

Her's was at times the face of a young woman, or that of old woman's, or it was the face of a man, or that of an innocent and impish child.

Esperanza said that millennia ago, men and women were the possessors of a knowledge that allowed them to slip in and out of our normal world.

And thus they divided their lives into two areas: the day, and the night.

During the day they conducted their activities like everyone else. They engaged in normal, expected, everyday behavior.

During the night, however, they became dreamers.

They systematically dreamed dreams that broke the boundaries of what we consider to be reality.

Again she paused, as though giving me time to let her words sink in.

She went on, "Using the darkness as a cloak, they accomplished an inconceivable thing. They were able to dream while they were awake."

Anticipating the question I was about to voice, Esperanza explained that to be dreaming while they were awake meant that they could immerse themselves in a dream that gave them the energy necessary to perform mind staggering feats while they were perfectly conscious and awake.

Because of the aggressive mode of interaction I had grow up with at home, I never developed the ability to listen for very long. If I could not meddle with direct, belligerent questions, any verbal exchange, no matter how interesting, became meaningless to me.

So now, unable to argue, I became restless. I was dying to interrupt Esperanza.

Truly I had questions. But to get answers and to have things explained to me was not the thrust of my urge to interrupt.

What I wanted to do was to give in to my compulsion to have a shouting match with her in order to feel normal again.

As if privy to my turmoil, Esperanza stared at me for an instant and then signaled me to speak. Or I thought she had given me such a command.

I opened my mouth to say, as usual, anything that came to my mind even if it was not related to the subject. But I could not say a word.

I struggled to speak and made gargling sounds to the delight of the women in the background.

Esperanza resumed talking, as if she had not noticed my futile efforts.

It surprised me to no end that she had my undivided attention.

She said that the origins of the sorcerers' knowledge could be understood only in terms of a legend.

A superior being, commiserating with the terrible plight of men who were driven, as if animals, by food and reproduction, gave man the power to dream, and taught him how to use his dreams.

Esperanza elucidated, "Legends, of course, tell the truth in a concealed fashion. But the truths behind a legend only remains hidden while you remain conviced that they are simply stories.

"Legends of men changing into birds or angels are accounts of a concealed truth which appears to be simply the fantasizing or the delusions of primitive or deranged minds.

"And so it has been the task of sorcerers for thousands of years to discover the concealed truth of old legends, and to make new ones.

"This is where dreamers come into the picture. Women are best at dreaming. They have the facility to abandon themselves; the facility to let go.

"The woman who taught me to dream could maintain two hundred dreams."

Esperanza regarded me intently as if she were appraising my reaction, and my reaction was was complete stupefaction for I had no idea what she meant.

She explained that to maintain a dream meant that one could dream something specific about oneself and one could enter into that dream at will. Her teacher, she said, could enter at will into two hundred specific dreams about herself.

Esperanza assured me, "Women are peerless dreamers."

"Women are extremely practical. In order to sustain a dream one must be practical, because the dream must pertain to practical aspects of oneself.

"My teacher's favorite dream was to dream of herself as a hawk. Another was to dream of herself as an owl.

"So depending on the time of the day, she could dream about being either one, and since she was dreaming while she was awake, she was really and absolutely a hawk or an owl."

There was such a sincerity and conviction in her tone and eyes that I was entirely under her spell.

And not for a moment did I doubt her. Nothing she could have said would have seemed outlandish to me at that moment.

She further explained that in order to accomplish a dream of that nature, women need to have an iron discipline.

She leaned toward me and in a confidential whisper, as though she did not want the others to overhear her, she said, "By iron discipline I do not mean any kind of strenuous routine, but rather I mean that women have to break the routine of what is expected of them."

Esperanza stressed, "And they have to do it in their youth. And most important, with their strength intact.

"Often, when women are old enough to be done with the business of being women, they decide it is time to concern themselves with nonworldly or other-worldly thoughts and activities.

"Little do they know or want to believe that hardly ever do such women succeed."

Esperanza gently slapped my stomach as if she were playing on a drum, and said, "The secret of a woman's strength is her womb."

Esperanza nodded emphatically, as if she had actually heard the silly question that popped into my mind, "Her womb?"

She continued, "Women must begin by burning their matrix. They cannot be the fertile ground that has to be seeded by men following the command of God himself."

Still watching me closely, she smiled and asked, "Are you religious by any chance?"

I shook my head because I could not speak. My throat was so constricted I could scarcely breathe.

I was dumbstruck with fear and amazement, not so much by what she was saying, but by a change in her. All of a sudden I noticed her face was young and radiant. Inner life seemed to have been fired up in her.

Yet if I were asked, I would not have been able to tell when she had changed.

Responding to my nod, Esperanza exclaimed, "That is good! This way you do not have to struggle against beliefs." She pointed out that beliefs are very hard to overcome.

Esperanza sighed, saying, "I was reared a devout Catholic. I nearly died when I had to examine my attitude toward religion."

Her voice, turned wistful and soft as she added, "But that was nothing compared to the battle I had to wage before I became a bona fide dreamer."

I waited expectantly, hardly breathing, while a quite pleasurable sensation spread like a mild electrical current through my entire body.

I anticipated a tale of a gruesome battle between herself and terrifying creatures.

I could barely disguise my disappointment when she revealed that she had to battle herself.

Esperanza explained, "In order to be a dreamer, I had to vanquish the self, and nothing, but nothing, is as hard as that.

"We women are the most wretched prisoners of the self. The self is our cage.

"Our cage is made out of commands and expectations poured on us from the moment we are born.

"You know how it is. If the first born child is a boy, there is a celebration. If it is a girl, there is a shrug of the shoulders and the statement, 'It is all right. I still will love her and do anything for her.'"

Out of respect for the old woman, I did not laugh out loud.

Never in my life had I heard statements of that sort. I considered myself an independent woman, but obviously, in light of what Esperanza was saying, I was no better off than any other woman.

And contrary to the manner in which I would have normally reacted to such an idea, I agreed with her.

I had always been made aware that the precondition of my being a woman was to be dependent. I was taught that a woman was indeed fortunate if she could be desirable so men would do things for her. I was told that it was demeaning to my womanhood to endeavor to do anything myself if that thing could be given to me. It was drilled into me that a woman's place is in the home with her husband and her children.

Esperanza went on, "Like you, I was reared by an authoritarian yet lenient father.

"I thought, like yourself, that I was free. For me to understand the sorcerers' way, and to understand that freedom did not mean being 'myself' nearly killed me.

"Being myself meant asserting asserting my womanhood, and doing that had taken all of my time, effort, and energy.

"The sorcerers, on the contrary, understand freedom as the capacity to do the impossible and the unexpected; to dream a dream that has no basis and no reality in everyday life."

Her voice again became but a whisper as she added, "The knowledge of sorcerers is what is exciting and new.

"Imagination is what a woman needs to change the self and become a dreamer."

Esperanza said that if she had not succeeded in vanquishing the self, she would have only led a woman's normal life; the life her parents had designed for her; a life of defeat and humiliation; a life devoid of all mystery; a life that had been programmed by custom and tradition.

Esperanza pinched my arm, and I cried put in pain.

She reprimanded me, saying, "You had best pay attention."

I had been certain that no one would notice my waning interest. I rubbed my arm, and mumbled defensively, "I am."

Esperanza warned me, "You will not be tricked or enticed into the sorcerer's world. You have to choose while knowing what awaits you."

The fluctuations of my mood were astonishing to me because they were quite irrational. I should have been afraid, and yet I was as calm as if my being there were the most natural thing in the world.

Esperanza slapped my stomach once more, and again said, "The secret of a woman's strength is her womb."

She explained that women dream with their wombs, or rather, from their wombs, and the fact that they have wombs makes them perfect dreamers.

Before I had even finished my own questioning thought, Esperanza answered it by saying, "Why is the womb so important? The womb is the center of our creative energy, to the point that, if there would be no more males in the world, women could continue to reproduce.

She added that women reproducing unilaterally could only reproduce clones of themselves, and so the world would then be populated by the female of the human species only.

I was genuinely surprised at this specific piece of knowledge.

I could not help interrupting Esperanza to tell her that I had read about parthenogenetic and asexual reproduction in a biology class.

She shrugged her shoulders, and went on with her explanation, saying, "Women, having the ability and the organs for reproducing life, also have the ability to produce dreams with those same organs."

Seeing the doubt in my eyes, she warned me, "Do not trouble yourself wondering how it is done. The explanation is very simple, and yet it is the most difficult thing to think about. I still have trouble myself.

"So in a true woman's fashion, I act. I dream, and leave the explanations to the men."

Esperanza then said that originally the old sorcerers she had told me about used to pass their knowledge on to their biological descendants or to people of their private choice, but the results had been catastrophic.

Instead of enhancing this knowledge, these new sorcerers, who had been selected by arbitrary favoritism, confabulated to enhance themselves.

They were finally destroyed, and their destruction nearly obliterated their knowledge.

The few sorcerers who were left then decided that their knowledge should never again be passed on to their descendants or to people of their choice but to those selected by an impersonal power which they called the spirit.

Esperanza pronounced, "And now, all this brings us to you."

"The sorcerers of ancient times decided that only the ones who were pinpointed would qualify. You were pointed out to us. And here you are!

"You are a natural dreamer, but it is up to the forces that rule us where you go from here.

"It is not up to you. Nor to us, of course.

"You can only acquiesce or refuse."

From the urgency in her voice, and the compelling light in her eyes, it was obvious that she had given this explanation in complete seriousness.

It was this earnestness that stopped me from laughing out loud. Also, I was too exhausted.

The mental concentration I had needed to follow her was too intense. I wanted to sleep.

She insisted I stretch my legs, lie down, and relax.

I did it so thoroughly that I dozed off.

When I opened my eyes, I had no idea how long I had slept.

I sought the reassuring presence of Esperanza or the other women.

But although there was no one with me on the patio, I did not feel alone. Somehow their presence lingered amidst the green all around me, and I felt protected.

A breeze rustled the leaves. I felt it on my eyelids; warm and soft. It blew around me, and passed over me the same way it was passing over the desert; quickly and soundlessly.

With my gaze fixed on the tiles, I walked around the patio trying to figure out its intricate design. To my delight, the lines led me from one rush chair to the other. I tried to recall who had sat in which chair, but as hard as I tried, I could not remember.

I was distracted by a delicious scent of food, spiced with onions and garlic.

Guided by that smell, I found my way to the kitchen; a large rectangular room.

It was as deserted as the patio. And the bright tile designs adorning the walls reminded me of the patterns in the patio.

I did not pursue the similarities, for I had discovered the food left on the sturdy wooden table standing in the middle of the room.

Assuming that it was for me, I sat down and ate it all. It was the same spicy stew I had eaten at the picnic. Warmed over, it was even tastier.

As I gathered the dishes to take them to the sink, I discovered a note and a drawn map under my place mat.

It was from Delia. She suggested I return to Los Angeles by way of Tucson where she would meet me at a certain coffee shop specified on the map.

Only there, she wrote, would she tell me more about herself and her friends.