by Alena Deerwater
When you hear the raven caw, have your umbrella handy, for the heavens are about to open their chutes and pour upon you blessings galore.
– Rabbi Gershon Winkler, Kabbalah 365
A flock of ravens jabbers in the bright sun, calling to us from the overgrown bluegrass among the black walnut trees and red oaks who stand guard over our backyard. All seem insistent to get our attention and interrupt naptime. Raina perches in my arms, flattens her forehead against the window of her bedroom, blue eyes wide as if to inhale as many winged creatures as possible. I try to count them for her from our vantage point on the second story of our tiny Tudor home, but more birds keep arriving.
“One pretty black bird, two, three, four, five . . . .” Raina loves numbers. A trait shared with her big sister Lilly, and their father Dan who trains math teachers at the local university.
Raina and I had been rocking back and forth, hoping to head for an afternoon snooze when the ravens started their rousing cries. Raw discoveries about the secret life of my husband for the past seven years pecked at my brain as I aimed Raina toward slumber. My almost sleeping babe sat up in my lap, rosy-cheeked, leaning toward the window of caws, like she could fly there from pure tenacious volition.
Now we stand at the window in awe. Dark iridescent wings flood our long rectangle of wildness caught between the neatly manicured back lawns of our neighbors. A tree-arched walking path hides behind all the houses in this older part of Normal, Illinois. Some nights you can hear the ghosts of trains who used to run the former track. The ravens choose to land only on our little patch of earth, no other. Our narrow yard barely holds them.
I've never feared ravens. And I don't relate to all the fuss people make about them being evil. Hogwash, I say. I prefer the notion that ravens are trickster birds who carry magic; they bring answers from the dark void where Spirit resides. Black angels. Offering a tougher, truer path to self-transformation. This gathering in my backyard is stunning. Begins to take me out of my self-absorption about my fate with an unfaithful man.
Every night for the past week, after little ears nod into sleep, Dan has added confessions to his growing list of betrayals. Each one manages to surprise me more than the one before. We hadn't even met when his duplicitous escapades started. Am I trapped in an endless vortex of being sole witness to his life story of secret misdoings? I want out. But not necessarily from him, I realize. The chink he has exposed in our marriage has split open, letting in a harsh light, illuminating my soul's desires, abandoned and shivering in the shadows of the life I have been living by rote. No more. I want . . . I want . . . I want to go west – as far as I can go without falling into the ocean – and then north. I want to land someplace where redwoods reside. That is as specific as I can get. Of course the girls come with me. Do I leap – Lilly cradled in one arm, Raina in the other? What if we fall. The idea of the three of us crashing in my parents' basement deflates me even more than my present descent into dark chaos. And Dan – do I leave him or does he come with us? Honestly, I don't believe I have the stamina or courage to do the journey without him. Plus we have always parented so well together. Supported each other. He believes in my writer-self more than anyone else. We just have this huge problem around sex.
“So are you going to stop?” I fire hushed, sharp words at him point blank over the open dishwasher.
“Yes.” Dan scrapes with his fingernail at the encrusted baby-food on the bright little bowl. “I mean, I want to.” He pauses, letting an unaccustomed, deeper truthfulness escape from his mouth. “I want to – but I don't know if I can.”
I turn from the window carrying Raina back toward our Normal daily routine. Bright light flashes onto the sky blue wall above Raina's changing table, waking my insides more than the raucous birds. Shadows of leaves suddenly dance with piercing sunlight like a welcome spirit from a departed world.
I inhale the light and the dark deep into my lungs; hold them there, close to my heart.
2891 Paxton Road, Shaker Heights, Ohio. I am a child again in the grand old Tudor house who raised me. 751-7001. The first numbers I ever learned by heart. I remember my older sisters playing schoolteacher and writing our address and phone number on the miniature chalkboard. Preparing me with the necessary skills to start kindergarten. Those numbers are like an ancestral song. A chant, echoing back over miles and years: twenty-eight ninety-one Paxton Road; twenty-eight ninety-one Paxton Road; seven five one, seven oh-oh one; seven five one, seven oh-oh one . . . .
Two shimmering nocturnal guardians of my childhood return after years in captivity behind my adult brain.
One: A young Indian brave sits in the tree outside my bedroom window. He waits. Still. Silent. Moccasins adorn his feet; a simple deerskin tunic and pants line the curves of his squatting form, sheltering him from sun, rain, wind, or snow depending on the season. Long, dark braids frame his quiet face, swing down past neck, chest, waist. Nobody knows he's there, except me. I'm the only living soul who can see him, sense him. Each night as I wait for dreams to descend, I imagine that if I lay perfectly motionless, the Indian will think I am dead and won't come in and get me. A part of me wants him to move through the window and join me, but most of me fears him and keeps playing dead till I fall asleep. He never hurts me. He simply waits. For years.
Two: When nighttime fear won't lie still within me. I sneak out of bed and creep down the long hall, past the hushed light peaking from my sisters' sleeping dens, to Mommy and Daddy's room. Fear and I tremble in suspended animation outside their mostly closed door, clenched hand poised for knocking. Bare toes turning to ice. Mommy and Daddy hate when I wake them like this. Which is worse – disturbing their anger or staying up with my fear? I knock. Crawl up onto my mother's twin mattress, barely looking over her blanketed shoulder across the chasm to my father's sleeping form in his matching narrow bed. If I vanish from his awareness during these night visitations, my presence is less likely to cause eruptions of annoyance. Mommy and I turn and lie back to back under the covers. She faces my father's snoring bed and the window beyond it; I face the empty edge of the room and a rectangle of tree shadows in moonlight coming through the window and landing on the soft green wall. My gaze peeks out from between the sheets, listening for the fear I banished to the hallway. Shadows of leaves caress my frightened eyes. Smooth the wrinkles out of my agitated head, dancing stories made of the dappled play of shadow and light rather than words. My toes melt into puddles of comfort.
“Nothing to fear, little one,” the shadows of leaves whisper in my heart. “All is right in the world.”
All is right in the world. Is that what the ravens are gleefully announcing? Raina leans her warm little body into my chest. The aching there breaks open and flies out into the embrace of the tree shadows swirling on the wall. Nothing to fear, little one. We are ready to leave Normal.