Java Sparrow Press

( a short story )

The first thing one must learn about calling dreams is … dreams can’t be controlled. That would be like trying to control the waves of the sea. We did not come here to be Jesus – we will not walk on water.

Dreams are sacred. Sure, some of ‘em are wasted thoughts from the day, but some of those thoughts are messages. Like voicemail. Some matter. And some are bill collectors.

Dreams ain’t meant to be controlled. Like, when folk don’t know they’re taking their last breath. There’s no wand to wield when one sleeps. Even the most mastered can’t control the subconscious mind. The dragons will not be slayed. The monsters will come, and the angels, demons, and spirits are already here.

Some dreams ain’t even meant to be understood. Some things get said, or done, and then it’s over. We got all this energy around us, it’s going to affect our own. That’s the way of the world in these bodies. There’s a lot of bodies. There’s more energy than can be seen.

Sometimes, the very message that’s needed to get through the 3D day comes through the dreams. But people stay woke, or cover their dreams with drink, smoke, and some other thing that mess with the mind, so they never get the message. The same as when people die in their homes and no one knows, so the mail keeps getting delivered, their social security check keeps getting deposited into their account, so all the major bills still keep getting paid. There is no ending. Things must come to an end.

Folk want to know what their dreams mean, thinking it all could be so simple. Life ain’t even that simple. But it must be done, so I do it. It’s a living.

She come in my condo looking for beads, baskets, and balm. She surprised it ain’t magical, dark, or even spiritual in the way she understands spiritually. She look like she already tried to google her dream and didn’t get exactly what she wanted. Now, she skeptical, eyeing me, like I walk in her house and not the other way around. I got no sage burning, or jute rugs, no arm full of bracelets, or hand full of rings. There’s no house full of cats filling up her idea of what I should look like to be qualified to interpret her dreams.

Today would be a good day to have a cat or two. The girl entered with her spirits. They come in like they paid for services too! They ain’t meaning me no harm, of course! They’re with her as guides, protection. But she’s drained in a way she don’t know how to deal with. It’s hard for a spirit to keep their distance when they’re assigned. Sometimes, even the spirits lack balance, especially when it’s a lot of them. I lead her to my gray sofa because they need all that room. I take to sitting in my chair.

The coffee table got a sandalwood incense with a slow smoke. I got two decks on the table, and a couple of coasters, a tabletop fire pit, and a waterfall with no water in it. I feel enough water in her energy. She not lacking depth or feeling right now.

“Tea? Coffee? Water?”

“No, thank you. I bought my own.” She says, pulling out one of those metal water bottles that sound like submarines crashing when it falls to the floor. “Should I tell you about me?” Shy and timid, she speaks in a voice that is much smaller than she is pretending to be. But this is what life does – it beats the voice out of folk until it’s a whisper; Until they’re shrinking in their own skin. This ain’t her playing small. This is her not listening at all, not being obedient to her calling.

I don’t doubt that she already knows what her dream is telling her. She wants confirmation, validation. Fear creates confusion. I light the tabletop fireplace for her, so she can remember who she is. She watches the flames while I wait for her to get her footing.

“Tell me the dream. What you need clarification on?” I sip my lemon ginger tea. She pulls out a purple journal and flips through the pages. Her face is small, wide-eyed, and she’s biting her lip, no doubt second-guessing why she’s here. But she ain’t worried about her safety. She don’t think she gone die on my plush sofa. She wondering how much she believes in this. But, she wants to believe in something. Even if it’s me she believes in.

“I was on another planet; The sky was purple and pink. There were two suns and three moons in the daytime sky. I was long. Long and wavy, like when you look far away and there’s a lot of heat. I was a mirage. I was talking to a man that I work with. He was in my dream. We’re not close. We only say hi and bye, but every time I see him, he makes me smile. He’s got good energy. He feels like kin.

“He’s telling a story to people who look like us – mirages- and we’re all dressed in these purple and pink shades that I’ve never seen before. Everybody is laughing. It’s a proper utopia and we’re all aliens.

“Then, I see myself get beamed down from somewhere. We all stop and watch, like this is a normal happening. I look around, waiting for somebody to notice that it’s me. Because, I’m already there! I continue watching, but my friends go back to talking like it doesn’t matter.

This other me, she got a baby. The baby is me too! She puts the baby on the ground. It don’t look old enough to walk, so it sits on the ground. The baby gets beamed up, immediately. I don’t know where they came from but it looks like the same light beam that beamed them down is now beaming the baby up. They’re faces are expressionless.

The baby gets beamed up. Then the woman – me – just walks off in the other direction. I stand there and watch her. She leaves without the child. With no consequences. She just left!”

“What did you do after she left?”

“I stood there. Watching. The beam plus the baby was gone. Then, the woman disappeared into the crowd of people.”

“Did you follow her?”

“No. I tried. I wanted to. I woke up instead.”

The woman is distraught. Her song is loud. It makes sense that all these spirits are around her. The longer I sit watching her, the more I feel that all the spirits don’t mean her good or bad. They are a part of her.

They are invested in her. They keep her. I don’t believe that she doesn’t know what her dream means. It’s meant for her to understand it. Her spirits only speak her language. She’s perceptive, they’ve seen to it. This is to help wake her. She’s half-dormant in her God energy.

She looks at me after taking a deep breath, shaking off her discomfort. Or anger. Is she angry? She’s nearly vibrating out of her skin, like her nerves are exposed, and firing. Her fingers are cracking its knuckles over and over, holding her body that’s rocking back and forth like her spirit is trying to come out of her; her legs are shaking, eyes blinking quickly, her body is in fight AND flight mode.

“You’re not going to tell me what it means?

“Seems to me, you know what it means. Your body knows, even if you don’t want to acknowledge it just yet.”

She stiffens, and that damn water bottle falls to the floor – sounds like two cars crashing. She jumps. I saw it happening before it happened. In her long linen dress, with beads around her neck and wrist, her hair wrapped up like some ancient Nubian Hebrew Woman, she looks like she should already be doing what I do. She receives visions that she’s too afraid to interpret. The vine tattoo on her left arm goes all the way up, and I am sure that it’s connected to a tree hidden by her dress on her back. She has yet to accept her calling. Sometimes, it’s easier to play dress-up to accept the identity instead of the role.

“What do you mean?”

“Who is the baby?” I ask her.

“I’m here to ask you that question. You don’t know, do you?” She narrows her eyes at me, deciding not to trust me. “You don’t even look like you know.”

“And you look like you do, so … looks can be deceiving, can they not?” I sip my tea. It’s still hot. I let the heat penetrate through my palm and my fingers. I take another sip before I return my cup to the coaster. “Who is the baby?”

I picked up my nature deck. I created this one. There were too many people coming in with a gift that the tarot decks couldn’t read or interpret for. People got latent talents that spread further and wider than the astrological decks of fates, fae, and fairies. It’s possible that everyone ain’t Medieval People from Middle Earth. Some of those decks don’t include colored folk nor black ones. It’s not inclusive of the South, the North, or the Diaspora at all. Some folk got gifts some decks know nothing about.

I shuffled four times, because I didn’t think to do this before she got here. “Dreams are left up to interpretation. Your guides speak to you in your language. It’s not out of your depth to be able to understand it.”

“Is the baby me? The baby looked like me. It had to be me, right?” She puts her journal in her bag, and stares into the fire. She wants to watch me but the fire holds her attention. I thought it might. “My mother gave me away.”

“The woman didn’t look like your mother though, did she?” I ask, shuffling again, for good measure.

“The woman and the baby looked like me. I don’t look like my mother. They felt like me. It was very clear that it was me. But how could there be three versions of me?”

“There may be many more versions of you scattered about. The universe is a lot bigger than we know. Cut.” I tell her. The deck is in one pile on the coffee table. She takes the cards and cuts it in three, leaving it in three separate piles instead of just the one. It ain’t the way I ever seen it, but I let it be. Her spirits got their ways and she got her reasons. “Take the first card off the top.” She takes the top card of the third deck first. Her face twists up when she does. I already know what she got.

Sugar Cane.

No card conjures up that energy of pain and rage like cotton, tobacco, or sugar cane. This how I know a person’s past, by the way they react to those cards. That’s ancestral pain that stretches across their face when they see it. They got folk in their lineage who worked those fields.

There’s an unforgiveness when the descendants see it. Mind you, a great deal of em ain’t never seen those fields up close, outside of a picture or their television screens. They have memories that ain’t quite theirs. Yet, the blood can’t tell the difference. They remember what they lost.

“You want me to read it? Or…”

“You can, if you want. It’s already speaking to you, I imagine.”

“For a group of people, …” She begins, taking a breath, her voice disappearing for spirit to read for her – Can’t blame a human for not being strong enough to read it. “…this image summons ancestral trauma. But that’s not the end or the beginning of pain or pleasure. The cultivation of sugarcane isn’t complicated, nor complex, but it is tedious, back-breaking work. Like Sugar Cane, you are loved. Until it requires tending, until YOU require tending. Be wary of those that want your goods without tending to you. For those that love your sweetness enough to stay in your land, help them learn how to cultivate their way in you.”

Her tears crawl down her face in slow motion. Her fingers drops the card to the floor, but she manages to cradle the water bottle to her torso. “I didn’t dream about no damn sugar cane.” She spits through her teeth, holding herself together. She got more grit than I gave her credit for. If she could bite me, she would.

There ain’t no need for me to respond, so I don’t. I look from her to the next pile for her to pull from. Ain’t no sense in crying over spilled milk. We move on. She understands what I don’t say. After grabbing the card from the floor, she pulls from the deck closest to her.

“A compass? What the hell does a compass mean?! What does any of this have to do with my dream?” She asks, not looking at me but at the card. Her fires are raging. She hasn’t learned how to turn her waters down to simmer so she steams instead. It’s better than a flood, or an inferno.

I know that the compass ain’t pointing North, it’s pointing South. Even further South than the States. I smell the salt in her skin that comes off the coast; There’s a hint of molasses in the air around her. She shakes off a quick chill. Her spirits settle near her looking at the card. They want to see what she sees. They surround her trying to see if they need to help tame her or rouse her into self-preservation mode. They settle her.

She reads, not having much of a choice, “A compass – a magnetic instrument meant to guide (connect to the four corners of the world) – is a reminder of where you come from. There is comfort and security because you’re never lost if you know where you come from. Where you come from is in the blood. You can never be lost to yourself. “She inspects the card, her fingers playing over the image of it. Her eyes gloss over and for half a second, we can both see her beginnings – the sea, plantains, Ackee & saltfish over open flames; simple village dwellers fishing, piling coconuts while women made more nets and watched over the little ones – But only one of us knows what that quick vision is.

I taste the joy and the simplicity of the memory of her lineage. She thinks it’s something she read from a book. When she knows for sure that it’s not a fictional tale, she’ll be older than I am now and she will cry that she didn’t taste the joy and the simplicity when she had the chance to savor more of it. Because like all things, the memory will fade until she only remembers the feeling the children’s laughter and the women’s humming made her feel.

She sighs, taking a deep breath remembering where she is. Her foot digs into my carpet, and her other foot, she puts under her leg providing a sense of comfort in her own skin. She’s ready.

When she looks at me, I look at the last deck to pull from. She puts the card on the table and picks up the top card of the middle deck. She takes another deep breath before she turns it over to reveal it to herself.

“Aloe Vera,” she smiles. She holds back tears filled with longing, and memories. “My grandmother had a million Aloe Vera Plants in her house.” Her purple nail polish gloss and sparkle in parts of the sunshine peeking in my windows, while she traces the patterns of plants on the card. “The plant of immortality, healing, ancestors, and energy: It can grow in and out of soil, in various conditions.” Her voice blends with the spirits until they are almost one and the same. “Your duality, much like the Aloe Vera Plant, is meant to be balanced, mastered. Balance your time in the light and your time in the dark. Neither are meant for the human body to remain in. Too much dark, you lose your humanity. Too much light, humanity can no longer see you.

“Root yourself in your own spirit. You can thrive in harsh conditions; Be wary but welcoming, you attract hummingbirds, spiders and pests. They can be beneficial AND permissible. You get to monitor who makes a home in you.”

She looks out the window letting all the feelings and the words flow through her. She’s receiving it. Letting it embrace her because it doesn’t mean to hurt her.

The energy in the room is somber, reflective. All the energies around her take up less room so she can take up more.

Spirits and Angels don’t have feelings about most things. They stay near to do a job, to guide and direct. The ancestors are the ones with the feelings. She got a strong one that didn’t come in with her for this very reason.

She breathes through it before she swallows loud and dry in the silence. The fire of small crackles can barely be heard over her deep breaths. She takes a couple of sips from her metal water bottle and takes another breath before returning. She looks at the fires instead of me, or the cards.

“The baby is my inner child. I’ve been protecting her. But, she’s taken care of and it had nothing to do with me.” She breathes out. She wraps her arms around her legs like chains, forcing her spirit to sit still in that body. “There were no consequences for the me that was able to walk away. I did the work. It was done. I got options. I get to choose.” She wipes the corner of her eyes, but there are no tears there.

I sip the last of my tea before I gather the cards to put back in one pile. “This life is duality. Balance. Seems some of your calling is mastering that duality. The human part and the otherworldly part. The dream says, you’re ready.”

“What does all of this mean for my life?”

“You signed up for something in this lifetime. Your life is preparing you for it. You can’t opt out of it. That ain’t how agreements work. You are co-creating. You got a lot of spirits ‘round you to keep you on track. Have your good times, bliss, and shenanigans. But, you’re called for something else. It’s time to be who you are. Only you and your spirits know that part.”

She puts her water bottle in her bag. It’s abrupt. She wants freedom, a different air to breathe in. Her spirit wants to move. Her shoes are at the door, she’s already paid up. “You are never alone. You got passed on loved ones with you and angels. You have the understanding to interpret the dreams of meaning.”

She goes in her bag then her wallet to pull out a twenty dollar bill and a five, leaving it beside the fires. “I didn’t pay for all this extra. Thank you.”

“Much appreciation.” I nod with thankfulness. I watch her walk to the door and put on her sandals.

She smiles at me from the door. It don’t quite reach her eyes, though. It’s politeness, an appreciation for services rendered. All those words are still playing and replaying itself in her body, sitting in her mind and spirit. Now she gotta decide what she wants to do about it. It ain’t like her dream bringing her shock or surprise. It’s time for her to understand who she is now. How she now has to become who she agreed to be.

“I shouldn’t ask, but do you do training?”

“When you’re ready to receive who you are, you won’t need me to be who you will become.” She takes a breath before she opens the front door. A smile tries to sneak across her face but she shakes it off before she walks out my front door. I feel all her spirits go with her while I sip my tepid tea, AFTER I turn off the tabletop fireplace. I got enough fire for the day.