Pilgrimage

"Karen, do you think I'll ever get straightened out?" she asked.
"If you're not too enamored of your difficulties," Karen said, her hand on the doorknob. "If you're not too firmly set on remodeling 'nearer to your heart's desire.' We may think this is a 'sorry scheme of things' but we have to learn that our own judgment is neither completely valid nor the polestar for charting our voyage. Too often we operate on the premise that what we think just has to be the norm for all things. Really, you'd find it most comforting to admit that you aren't running the universe-that you can't be responsible for everything, that there are lots of things you can and must relinquish into other hands-"
"To let go-" Lea looked down at her clenched hands. "I've held them like this so much it's a wonder my nails haven't grown through my palms."
"Sneaky way to keep from having to use nail polish!" Karen laughed. "But come-to bed, to bed. Oh, I'll be so glad when I can take you over the hill!" She opened the door and went in, tugging at her jacket. "I just ache to talk it over with you, good old Outsider-type talking. I acquired quite a taste for it that year I spent Outside-" Her voice faded down the hall. Lea looked up at the brilliant stars that punctuated the near horizon.
"The stars come down," she thought, "down to the hills and the darkness. The darkness lifts up to the hills and the stars. And here on the porch is a me-sized empty place trying to Become. It's so hard to reconcile darkness and the stars-but what else are we but an attempt at reconciliation?"
Night came again. It seemed to Lea that time was like a fan. The evenings were the carefully carved, tangible bones of the fan that held their identity firmly. The days folded themselves meekly away between the nights-days containing patterns only in that they were bounded on each side by evenings-folded days scribbled on unintelligibly. She held herself carefully away from any attempt to read the scrawling scribbles. If they meant anything she didn't want to know it. Only so long as she could keep from reading meanings into anything or trying to relate one thing to another-only that long could she maintain the precarious peace of the folded days and active evenings.
She settled down almost gladly into the desk that had become pleasantly familiar. "It's rather like drugging myself on movies or books or TV," she thought. "I bring my mind empty to the Gatherings, let the stories flow through and take my mind empty home again." Home? Home? She felt the fist clench in her chest and twist sharply, but she stubbornly concentrated on the lights that swung from the ceiling. Her attention sharpened on them. "Those aren't electric lights," she whispered to Karen. "Nor Coleman lanterns. What are they?"
"Lights," Karen smiled. "They cost a dime apiece. A dime and Dita. She glowed them for us. I've been practicing like mad and I almost glowed one the other day." She laughed ruefully.
"And she an Outsider! Oh, I tell you, Lea, you never know how much you use pride to keep yourself warm in this cold world until someone tears a hole in it and you shiver in the draft. Dita was a much-needed rip to a lot of us, bless her pointed little ears!"
"Greetings." Dr. Curtis slid into his seat next to Lea. "You'll like the story tonight," he nodded at Lea. "You share a great deal with Miss Carolle. I find it very interesting-the story, that is-well, and your similarity, too. Well, anyway, I find the story interesting because my own fine Italian hand-" He subsided as Miss Carolle came down the aisle.
"Why, she's crippled!" Lea thought in amazement. "Or has been," she amended. Then wondered what there was about Miss Carolle that made her think of handicaps.
"Handicaps?" Lea flushed. "I share a great deal with her?" She twisted the corner of her Kleenex. "Of course," she admitted humbly, ducking her head. "Handicapped-crippled-" She caught her breath as the darkness swelled-ripping to get in-or out-or just ripping. Before the tiny beads of cold sweat had time to finish forming on her upper lip and at her hairline she felt Karen touch her with a healing strength.
"Thank you, my soothing syrup," she thought wryly. "Don't be silly!" she heard Karen think sharply.
"Laugh at your Band-Aids after the scabs are off!"
Miss Carolle murmured into the sudden silence, "We are met together in Thy Name."
Lea let the world flow away from her.
"I have a theme song instead of just a theme," Miss Carolle said. "Ready?'"
Music strummed softly, coming from nowhere and from
everywhere. Lea felt wrapped about by its soft fullness. Then a clear voice took up the melody, so softly, so untrespassingly, that it seemed to Lea that the music itself had modulated to words, voicing some cry of her own that had never found words before.
"By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down and wept,
When we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps
Upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive
Required of us a song
And they that wasted us
Required of us mirth
Saying, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion.'
How shall we sing the Lord's song
In a strange land?"
Lea closed her eyes and felt weak tears slip from under the lids. She put her head down on her arms on the desk top to hide her face. Her heart, torn by the anguish of the music, was sore for all the captives who had ever been, of whatever captivity, but most especially for those who drove themselves into exile, who locked themselves into themselves and lost the key.
The crowd had become a listening person as Miss Carolle twisted her palms together, fingers spread and tense for a moment and then began ….
CAPTIVITY
I SUPPOSE many lonely souls have sat at their windows many nights looking out into the flood of moonlight, sad with a sadness that knows no comfort, a sadness underlined by a beauty that is in itself a pleasant kind of sorrow-but very few ever have seen what I saw that night.
I leaned against the window frame, close enough to the inflooding light so that it washed across my bare feet and the hem of my gown and splashed whitely against the foot of my bed, but picked up none of my features to identify me as a person, separate from the night. I was enjoying hastily, briefly, the magic of the loveliness before the moon would lose itself behind the heavy grove of cottonwoods that lined the creek below the curve of the back-yard garden. The first cluster of leaves had patterned itself against the edge of the moon when I saw him-the Francher kid. I felt a momentary surge of disappointment and annoyance that this perfect beauty should be marred by any person at all, let alone the Francher kid, but my annoyance passed as my interest sharpened.
What was he doing-half black and half white in the edge of the moonlight? In the higgledy-piggledy haphazardness of the town Groman's Grocery sidled in at an angle to the back yard of the Somansons' house, where I boarded-not farther than twenty feet away. The tiny high-up windows under the eaves of the store blinked in the full light. The Francher kid was standing, back to the moon, staring up at the windows. I leaned closer to watch. There was a waitingness about his shoulders, a prelude to movement, a beginning of something. Then there he was-up at the windows, pushing softly against the panes, opening a dark rectangle against the white side of the store. And then he was gone. I blinked and looked again. Store. Windows. One opened blankly. No Francher kid. Little windows. High up under the eaves. One opened blankly. No Francher kid.
Then the blank opening had movement inside it, and the Francher kid emerged with both hands full of something and slid down the moonlight to the ground outside.
"Now looky here!" I said to myself. "Hey! Lookit now!"