“Senora, the slave.”
For a moment, Irene looked at Maria while she slept, “Maria, el esclavo está bailando…” she says.
Things were changing, for better or worse she didn’t know, but all would be different if Maria awoke to what she was saying. She had come to love and care for Maria like a daughter…she needed to be protected, to be set free how her father imagined, to become aware… Baldo had become her prison but never understood his role…Tomas knew and would soon at some point interfere and know what his role was becoming with respect to Maria’s place in it…
“Que?” said Maria…
Maria was in the climax of a dream, now she would know...
“I awoke from a dream… a child was calling my attention, a wave from the shadows, so dark I couldn’t see but felt its call...”
“...and the child?” said Irene.
“It looked like you when it finally appeared it looked like you and stood before me but quickly stepped back to be overcome by the shadows having moved forward to overwhelm and drape the child in its darkness...”
The drums played like a madness expressed rose from below, repressed expressed the
madness apparent.
Irene, as if she immediately knew the dream… “The slave, he is dancing?”
“Como? That is the noise, there noise… stay here… let me look.” and slid forward off the bed to dress quickly in a shawl…
“Senora, I will come down with you…”
“No Irene, I must go myself.” And she darted from the room half dressed.
Maria reached the lowest level slowing to a near stop but stepping forward in a soft step as the other slaves awakened and watched Maria become aware... of the dancing slave…
Maria watched without calling attention to herself though it didn’t seem to matter to her…if he knew she where present, if she knew as well
An exotic dance that first was overwhelming, confounding, every move a story, a part of a whole that was the soul of both their stories…and the words, the song he sang in part with his dance… then found the drums from within.
He never stopped once he took note of her, she continued to watch, Anani dancing for her, to her… she slowly steps up to the iron mesh, placing her hands as she watched, enamored by his spiritual exhibition then perhaps not an exhibition but an expression of his sudden love for Maria, his deep love for home and the anger and hate for the Spanish that something whole within him was dancing, the dancing wasn’t him but from a larger being present in and out of them…
Anani stopped not embarrassed but to explain the meaning of his expression.
It is an expression in movement, of the movement in our hearts… the expression not is as confused as it has ever been but the clearest in its cause the clearest in its result which no seems to have an answer for and there may be none...he questions with an answer he isn’t sure of, the question becomes the answer.
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