“Who?” said a note taker. “Animal who?”
“Shoosh,” a neighbor whispered.
“Think back!” Miss Luptik said, in her “Make rain!” tone. She conducted with her free hand.
“Think back,” we said. “Think back.”
“Think back many moons.”
“Think back many moons,” we said, an obedient philharmonic.
“Think back to the time of rich earth, clear streams, pure sky, steaming beasts, sharp teeth. Think back to the time of strong medicine.”
“Strong medicine. Strong medicine. Strong medicine.”
“Medicine made from the human heart and the human head. Not cheese mold. No hypodermic remedy injected into the tushy. Medicine catapulted into the bloodstream by lightning in the navel, by the shaft of fear.”
Miss Mayberry dropped a plastic needle. It bounced, rolled and ended up at my feet. I let it lie.
“Medicine of flesh and for flesh. Medicine to make vegetables grow. Medicine to fill squaw belly with kicking sons. Medicine to rip the enemy. Medicine to chase blood-drinking ghosts. Medicine for fire, for water, for sunrise. Medicine for resurrection. Think back to the time of magic. Back, back, back. Let your brains be the land in a world of Wakonda.”
Miss Luptik dropped both arms to her sides and stood rigid, like a palace guard. She began to chant. Then she moved in a kind of religious box step. With a quick wrist motion she told us what she wanted, and we gave it to her. We stood in our places, duplicated her sounds and moved our feet. It was like singing a national anthem for a faraway flag.
Again she stopped suddenly and covered her face with her hands. Then she kissed the little doll, and held it to the girl sitting nearest to her desk. The girl kissed the doll, and passed it along. We all kissed the doll and it was returned, smudged with lipstick, to Miss Luptik’s right hand.
By the last and final kiss, we were had. With glazed eyes and open ears we entered the time of magic. Like a dentist tests his Novacaine, Miss Luptik tested our involvement by dropping the doll. Nobody moved. The doll, a plump fellow, took a short journey and came to rest two inches from Miss Mayberry’s knitting needle, an arrow pointed at its nose.
How can I tell you what happened next? I can only describe the skeleton. You must add the nerves and tubes.
Miss Luptik introduced us to the workaday gods and devils of the Navaho. She knew them so well, she could show us, in words, how they looked, what they wore, what or who they ate, how they played, how they were calmed, what they controlled, who they rewarded, who they destroyed.
For some reason, possibly of curriculum, possibly of need, possibly because Miss Luptik was then into a malevolent chapter of her Ph.D. thesis, she ran through the Wakonda Goods in three minutes flat, then swung over to the other camp. Here, in the kingdom of open sores, many legs, fuzzy bodies and pincers, Miss Luptik seemed curiously at home. Each creature Miss Luptik dragged up from the swamp was a separate Hitler, a swirl of claws and gore. In the sunny, dry classroom, Miss Luptik brewed bitter herbs. We sank in her soup, ankles, knees, thighs, middles, chests, necks, chins, mouths, noses, eyes, hair. We simmered together in an old clay pot.
Miss Luptik ran around the room begging for plants to grow, calling to the heart of each seed, begging the thunder people to rumble the world’s ovaries, fighting off demons, raising the dead, harvesting beans, butchering birds, cursing age, sucking at youth, licking strength from the fiery sun, then tonguing the cold moon for relief.
I stared down at the fallen doll. It grew, a tidal wave of sour protoplasm, slashed in color, its fat feather a weapon. I, Oliver August, who lights three on a match, was frightened half to death by the skinny instructor in the tight girdle. Miss Luptik was some new kind of ventriloquist. She spoke through the doll. And she, in turn, was someone else’s puppet.
Wakonda Bad rolled into a snake, crept like warm ooze into my head through the ear. And a strange and secondary magic occurred for me. The slap of red hands on stretched hide, the tomtom throbbing of Miss Luptik’s voice, changed to another music. Yellow hands beat drums of human meat. Chow Mein mixed with feathers. Wakonda Bad developed an urge for gold fillings. He wanted mine, and my belly button for a nose ring.
All fear has one mother. My mouth dried. My armpits were drenched. My neck tingled. I couldn’t breathe.
Slap! Miss Luptik clapped her hands. I fell five miles, breaking to pieces. Talk about timing. One minute before the bell, Miss Luptik returned us to the world.
In epilogue, a changed Miss Luptik, the familiar Miss Luptik, said in a chatty summary, “The dear Navahos knew their gods the way we know our own moles. They talked to them, prayed to them, made offerings to them. But they never never never depicted them. They never drew the gods. It was an inconceivable act, the worst imaginable sin. Think on that. Isn’t it the perfect testimony to pure horror? Isn’t it the essence of belief? They felt, with wisdom handed down through millenniums, that if the gods were drawn, the image would leap up and devour the artist. Crunch. Fini.”
The bell rang. Miss Luptik asked me to hand her the doll. She took it, dropped it into her bag, and left the room with gorgeous poise.
Later, Oliver August lay thinking of dark forces.
Our apartment was on the second floor. The neon sign from the candy store downstairs flashed on and off, a green guardian through the troubled nights of my childhood. That night I noticed the sign again after long years. I was glad to have it. I lay in bed thinking how shrewd were those Indian gods to avoid too much exposure, to put their faith in a kind of spiritual radio. How much worse is the imagined avenger, the shadow who knows.
Pictures or no, the peculiar truth is if the Rain God came walking on the Grand Concourse, I would recognize him instantly.
Some miles downtown and east, where the Island of Manhattan begins to narrow, Marilyn Mayberry was also awake.
“Good morning,” said cheerful Marilyn Mayberry on the following Thursday.
She came late, dressed for a party in a soft pink dress, a pink hat with a wide brim, white alligator shoes and bag, and long white gloves. Under a chubby arm, she carried a leather portfolio.
“Good morning, Sipping Deer,” Miss Luptik said.
Minutes before, I blushed when the teacher arrived at class. After Tuesday’s experience there was an intimacy between us. The night of her epic lecture, I had her three times in a series of greedy, protective dreams. Since then, this was our first daylight encounter.
When Miss Mayberry entered I was sadly accepting the fact that Miss Luptik would never again duplicate the Tuesday emotion. Her old self, she was telling us about ceremonies of initiation. She was strong but not possessed. Facing the truth was difficult. It was as if a doctor said to me, “Oliver, your stomach is ruined. You will never eat shrimps again.”
“I drew the gods,” Miss Mayberry said.
“Beg pardon, dear.”
“I drew your big old nasty gods. I drew them as an extra term project.”
“Ah?”
“I think they would look nice hanging around the room.”
Miss Mayberry pulled the zipper that held her portfolio together. She lifted out a pile of drawing boards. In living color, before our eyes, Miss Mayberry displayed her gallery of gods. Each drawing bore a legend: