A few hours later, I exchanged the cool of Canada for the heat of Texas. The first person I saw when I got off the plane was Amiria. Who could miss her? She was as big as a house.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she wailed as she hugged me.
‘Gee, Sis, tell me something I don’t know,’ I said.
‘I can’t even fit behind the steering wheel any longer.’
I saw Tyrone, grinning from ear to ear. I shook his hand and whispered:
‘I suppose it’s twins, right?’
‘Even better,’ he said. ‘Triplets. I was wondering how I was going to keep Amiria off the freeways. Have you seen her drive? Man, she’s lethal — still hasn’t remembered which side of the road she should be on. Now she’ll be so busy with the kids and America will be able to breathe easy.’
Tyrone and Amiria’s uptown apartment was lavishly decorated and had a balcony view of the city to die for. In the early evening Tyrone excused himself, and left for work at the casino.
‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘I’d only be in the way. You two have a lot to talk about.’
Amiria and I sat on the balcony and watched the sun go down. Amiria told me about her life in Texas and how everybody was overjoyed about the triplets, especially Tyrone’s ex-girlfriend.
‘She thinks this is her chance to get Tyrone back. No way! All he wants to do at nights is to come home, put his head against my tummy and listen to the three little buggers fighting in there. He goes all cross-eyed and goofy-looking, and he’s full of plans for them. I can’t stand it!’
Amiria made dinner and we sat in the candelight munching on the diet to which the obstetrician had confined her: lettuce, carrots, fish, no dairy products or fatty foods whatsoever. I told her about my split with Jason, meeting Carlos, and Roimata’s proposal that we should think of getting married.
‘Give me that girl’s telephone number,’ Amiria said as the triplets kicked inside her. ‘There’s something somebody better warn her about fast.’
She gave me a quizzical look.
‘You’re moving, aren’t you Michael. I can see it in the way you are, the way you look, the way you act. It’s like you were in soft focus before you came out. Now you’re more defined, more clear, more purposeful. I can see you now.’
Amiria, my twin, had always been able to go straight to the heart of things.
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘I think you’re right. It’s taken me some time, but right now, I have embraced being gay. I’m no longer scared of it or ashamed of it. I’m glad of it and proud of it. And —’
‘And?’
I stood up. I looked at the darkening city.
‘Amiria, it has to stop. All this hatred of gay men and women. All the pain that it causes. I can help make the difference. I have to get out there in the front line.’
‘Mum and Dad won’t like that. I was talking to Mum on the telephone last week. I told her you were coming to see me. She and Dad are hoping for a reconciliation.’
‘That’s what they say, but that’s not what they want. What they want is for me to go home and tell them I’m sorry, I’ll be a good boy and that I won’t do it again. But that’s not the way it’s going to be, Sis. They’re going to have to accept me as I am. On my own terms.’
By late evening Amiria and I were like old lovers. There was only one last thing to tell her. I breathed in deep, saw the stars spinning in the night sky and began.
‘Amiria, I need to tell you about someone you don’t know. He was our uncle. His name was Sam —’
That night, speaking Uncle Sam’s story to Amiria, singing and crying his story into the dawn, was the First Telling.
I had a wonderful few days with Amiria. She and Tyrone had an invitation to go to the opening of the Dan Flavin art installation down at Marfa, and they insisted I go with them. We booked into the El Paisano Hotel, where the cast of Giant had stayed while making the film. Amiria and Tyrone had Elizabeth Taylor’s room, I had James Dean’s, and I imagined Auntie Pat’s face when I told her. The Flavin installation was stunning — awe-inspiring fluorescent gateways illuminating tunnels of darkness. All too soon, however, it was time to go home.
‘Will you come back?’ Amiria asked.
‘I’ll come when the triplets are born.’
We hugged and kissed. Amiria didn’t want to let me go.
‘Tell Roimata not to bother to have a kid of her own,’ she yelled, as I ran to catch my flight. ‘She can take one of mine!’
It’s strange how these things happen. On the flight to Los Angeles the plane ran into a lightning storm. The lightning flashed and zinged and crackled across the sky in a display of awesome power. I kept thinking of fluorescent gateways, opening and opening, one after the other, a limitless set of doors leading to some great mystery.
Was the lightning display just to be admired for itself, or was it a portent of some kind? Was there something in what Sterling had told me about people of two spirits and the berdache culture:
‘People of two spirits were shamans. The berdache were the ones to go out onto the battlefields to collect the dead. They could communicate with the gods. They were dream travellers —’
Somewhere between Houston and Los Angeles I tapped into my second spirit. I saw myself holding Uncle Sam’s body in my arms and carrying it through a pyrotechnic storm of lightning strikes and fluorescent gateways. Ahead, in that fearful universe, I saw an altar. I placed Uncle Sam’s body on it and uttered a prayer to any gods who were listening:
‘Have mercy. Have pity. Please, not eternal darkness —’
Was that it? Was that what happened?
All I know is that it was stifling and hot in Los Angeles. My throat was dry. There was a water fountain near the airline’s lounge, but I wasn’t quite sure how to operate it. There was no hand button or foot pedal to activate the flow. A teenage girl, watching, put me out of my misery.
‘It works automatically,’ she said. ‘You lower your face to the fountain and —’
Yeah, the water comes out and spits you in the eye.
I heard a ripple of amusement as I drank. The water was cool. I scooped some in my left hand and rubbed it on my neck. I began to stand.
That’s when I felt the presence of the past.
Perhaps the music being piped through the terminal had something to do with it: ‘Rhapsody In Blue’, redolent of the Big Band era, American nostalgia, Fourth of July. The ‘Rhapsody’ reached that point where the big melody comes in. It soared above me and I followed its path —
And a flight of helicopters came out of the music, circling down through the blue sky over Vietnam, to land at the far end of the concourse. The lead chopper was already on the ground. The rotors slowed to a halt. A pilot stepped out. He saw me, waved, smiled, took off his sunglasses. His eyes, so green. His teeth, so white and even. His boyish grin. He looked so handsome in his flyer’s kit.
‘Hey! Sam —’
Cliff Harper.
‘This can’t be happening.’
The water from the fountain was still fresh on my hands. I swayed, closed my eyes and spread the water with my fingers across my lips.
Ah, rainwater, it is always so cool.
When I recovered, I looked back down the concourse. My heart was pounding — had it just been my imagination? People were rushing backwards and forwards, obscuring my vision. Then I saw him again, the handsome, smiling pilot walking towards me. It was happening. But something was wrong. At every step, at every move as he tried to get through the press of people, he became older. His youthful stride began to falter — and I began to feel an extraordinary sense of aroha for him.