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"They [the sorcerers] reared me as one rears a child," she finally said. "It doesn't matter how old you are: In their world, you are a child."
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Esperanza claimed that originally the sorcerers she had told me about used to pass their knowledge on to their biological descendants or to people of their private choice, but the results had been catastrophic.
Instead of enhancing this knowledge, these new sorcerers, who had been selected by arbitrary favoritism, confabulated to enhance themselves.
They were finally destroyed, and their destruction nearly obliterated their knowledge.
The few sorcerers who were left then decided that their knowledge should never again be passed on to their descendants or to people of their choice but to those selected by an impersonal power, which they called the spirit.
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It was impossible for me to determine, at that time, whether the picnic had been a dream or had actually taken place.
I was incapable of remembering, in a sequential order, all the events I had participated in from the moment I fell asleep on the bed in the healing room.
My next clear recollection was that I found myself talking with Delia at the table, in that same room.
Familiar with such lapses of memory, which used to occur in my childhood, I didn't at first make much of this discrepancy. As a child, eager to play, I would often get out of my bed half asleep and sneak out of my house through the window grill. Many times, I did indeed wake up in the plaza, playing with other children who weren't put to bed as early as I was.
There was no doubt in my mind that the picnic had been real, although I couldn't immediately place it in a time sequence.
I tried to think, to reconstruct the events, but it frightened me to bring forth the idea of my childhood memory lapses.
Somehow, I was reluctant to ask Delia about her friends, and she didn't volunteer any information either.
However, I did ask about the healing session, which I knew had been a dream.
"I had such an elaborate dream about a healer," I began cautiously. "Not only did she tell me her name, but she also assured me that she had made all my nightmares vanish."
"It wasn't a dream," Delia stated, her tone clearly revealing her displeasure.
She stared at me with an intensity that made me want to fidget, to move away. "The healer did tell you her name," she went on. "And she certainly did cure you from your sleep maladies."
"But it was a dream," I insisted. "In my dream, the healer was the size of a child. She couldn't have been real."
Delia reached for the glass of water on the table, but she didn't drink. She turned it around, on and on, without spilling a drop.
Then she looked at me with glittering eyes. "The healer gave you the impression of being little, that's all," she said, nodding to herself, as though the words had just occurred to her, and she had found them satisfactory.
She sipped her water with slow, slurping noises, and her eyes grew soft and reflective. "She had to be little in order to cure you."
"She had to be little? You mean I only saw her as being little?"
Delia nodded repeatedly then, leaning toward me, whispered, "You see, you were dreaming. Yet it wasn't a dream.
"The healer really came to you and cured you, but you were not in the place in which you are now."
"Come on, Delia," I objected. "What are you talking about? I know it was a dream. I am always totally aware that I am dreaming, even though the dreams are completely real to me. That's my malady, remember?"
"Maybe now that she has cured you, it's no longer your malady but your talent," Delia proposed, smiling. "But going back to your question, the healer had to be small, like a child, because you were quite young when your nightmares first began."
Her statement was so outlandish, I couldn't even laugh. "And now I am cured?" I asked facetiously.
"You are," she assured me. "In dreaming, cures are accomplished with great ease, almost effortlessly. What's difficult is to make people dream."
"Difficult?" I asked, my voice harsher than I had intended. "Everybody has dreams. We all have to sleep, don't we?"
Delia rolled her eyes derisively to the ceiling then gazed at me and said, "Those are not the dreams I am talking about.
"Those are ordinary dreams. Dreaming has purpose: Ordinary dreams don't have any."
"They certainly do!" I emphatically disagreed with her, then went into a lengthy diatribe about the psychological importance of dreams. I cited works on psychology, philosophy, and art.
Delia wasn't in the least impressed with my knowledge.
She agreed with me that ordinary dreams must indeed help maintain the mental health of individuals, but insisted that she wasn't concerned with that.
"Dreaming has a purpose: Ordinary dreams don't," she reiterated.
"What purpose, Delia?" I said condescendingly.
She turned her head sideways, as if she wanted to hide her face from me.
An instant later she looked back at me. Something cold and detached showed itself in her eyes, and the change of expression was altogether so ruthless that I was frightened.
"Dreaming always has a practical purpose," she declared. "It serves the dreamer in simple or intricate ways.
"It has served you to get rid of your sleeping maladies.
"It served the witches at the picnic to know your essence.
"It served me to screen myself out of the awareness of the immigration guard patrol asking to see your tourist card."
"I'm trying to understand what you are saying, Delia," I mumbled.
Then I asked forcefully, "Do you mean that you people can hypnotize others against their wills?"
"Call it that if you wish," she said.
On her face was a look of calm indifference that bore little sympathy. "What you can't see yet is that you, yourself, can enter quite effortlessly into what you would call a hypnotic state.
"We call it dreaming; a dream that's not a dream; a dream where we can do nearly anything our hearts desire."
Delia almost made sense to me, but I had no words with which to express my thoughts, my feelings.
I stared at her, baffled.
Suddenly, I remembered an event from my adolescence.
When I was finally allowed driving lessons in my father's jeep, I surprised my family by showing them that I already knew how to shift: I had been doing it for years in my dreams.
With an assurance that was even baffling to me, on my first venture I took the jeep on the old road from Caracas to La Guayra, the port by the sea.
I deliberated whether I should tell Delia about this episode, but instead asked her about the healer's size.
"She is not a tall woman, but neither is she as small as you saw her.
"In her healing dream, she projected her smallness for your benefit, and in doing so, she was small.
"That's the nature of magic. You have to be what you want to give the impression of."
"Is she a magician?" I asked expectantly.
The thought that they all worked in a circus; that they were part of some magic show had passed my mind at various times. It would explain so many things about them, I believed.
"No. She's not a magician," Delia said. "She's a sorceress."
Delia gazed at me so scornfully I was ashamed of my question. "Magicians are in a show," she explained, gazing at me pointedly:
"Sorcerers are in the world without being part of the world."
She was silent for a long time, then a sigh escaped her lips. "Would you like to see Esperanza now?" she asked.
"Yes," I said eagerly. "I would like that very much."
The possibility that the healer had been real and not a dream made my head spin.
I didn't quite believe Delia, and yet I wanted to believe her in the worst way. My thoughts ran wild.
Suddenly I realized that I hadn't mentioned to Delia that the healer of my dream had told me her name was Esperanza.
I was so absorbed in my thoughts I failed to notice that Delia as speaking.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"The only way you can make sense of all this is to call back dreaming," she maintained.
Laughing softly, she waved her hand as she were signaling someone to come.
Her words were of no importance to me. I was already pondering another train of thought.
Esperanza was real, and I was certain she was going to clarify everything for me.
Besides, she had not been the picnic: She had not treated me as abominably as all the other women had.
I harbored the vague hope that Esperanza had liked me, and this thought somehow restored my confidence.
To disguise my feelings from Delia, I told her that I was anxious to see the healer. "I would like to thank her, and of course, pay her for all she did for me."
"It's already paid," Delia stated. The mocking glint in her eyes early revealed that she was privy to my thoughts.
"What do you mean it's already paid?" I asked in an involuntarily high-pitched voice. "Who paid for it?"
"It's hard to explain," Delia began with a distant kindness that put me momentarily at ease:
"It all began at your friend's party in Nogales. I noticed you instantly."
"You did?" I asked expectantly, eager to hear some compliment on my tasteful and carefully chosen wardrobe.
There was an uncomfortable silence. I couldn't see Delia's eyes, veiled under her half-closed lids.
There was something quiet yet oddly disturbing about her voice as she said that what she had noticed about me was that every time I had to talk to my friend's grandmother, I seemed to be absentminded as if I were asleep.
"Absentminded is putting it mildly," I said. "You have no idea what I went through; what I had to do to convince that old lady that I wasn't the devil incarnate."
Delia seemed not to have heard me. "I knew in a flash that you had great facility to dream," she went on:
"So I followed you around through the house and saw you in action.
"You were not fully aware of what you were doing or saying. And yet you were doing fine; talking and laughing, and lying your head off to be liked."
"Are you calling me a liar?" I asked in jest but betraying my hurt.
I felt an impulse to get angry.
I stared at the pitcher of water on the table until the threatening feeling had passed.
"I wouldn't dare call you a liar," Delia pronounced rather pompously. "I'd call you a dreamer."
There was a heavy solemnity in her voice, but her eyes sparkled with mirth, with genial malice, as she said, "The sorcerers who reared me told me that it doesn't matter what one may say as long as one has the power to say it."
Her voice conveyed such enthusiasm and approval, that I was sure someone was behind one of the doors listening to us.
"And the way to get that power," she said, "is from dreaming.
"You don't know this because you do it naturally, but when you are in a pinch, your mind goes instantly into dreaming."
In order to change the subject, I asked, "Were you reared by sorcerers, Delia?"
"Of course I was," she declared, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Were your parents sorcerers?"
"Oh, no," she said and chuckled:
"The sorcerers found me one day and reared me from then on."
"How old were you? Were you a child?"
Delia laughed, as if with my question I had reached the height of humor.
"No, I wasn't a child," she said. "I was perhaps your age when they found me, and began to rear me."
"What do you mean they began to rear you?"
Delia gazed at me but without focusing her eyes on me. For a moment I thought she hadn't heard me or, if she had, she wasn't going to answer me.
I repeated my question.
She shrugged and smiled. "They reared me as one rears a child," she finally said. "It doesn't matter how old you are: In their world, you are a child."
Suddenly afraid we might be overheard, I glanced over my shoulder, and whispered, "Who are these sorcerers, Delia?"
"That's a very tough question," she mused. "At the moment, I can't even begin to answer it.
"All I can tell you about them is that they are the ones who said to me that one should never lie to be believed."
"Why should one lie then?" I asked.
"For the sheer pleasure of it," Delia promptly retorted.
She then rose from the chair, and walked toward the door that led to the yard.
Before stepping outside, she turned and with a grin on her face asked, "Do you know the saying, 'If you are not lying to be believed, you can say anything you want, regardless of what anybody thinks of you.'"
"I've never heard such a saying."
I suspected she had made it up: It had her stamp.
"Besides, I don't understand what you're trying to say," I added primly.
"I'm sure you do," she said, looking sidelong at me through the strands of her black hair.
Gesturing with her chin, she motioned me to follow her. "Let's go and see Esperanza now."
I jumped up and dashed after her, only to come to an abrupt halt by the door.
Momentarily blinded by the brightness outside, I stood there, wondering what had happened.
It seemed that no time had elapsed since I had run after Mr. Flores across the field. The sun, as it had been then, was still at the zenith.
I caught a glimpse of Delia's red skirt as she turned a corner.
I rushed after her across a stone archway that led to a most enchanting patio.
At first I saw nothing; so strong was the contrast between the dazzling sunlight and the intense shadows of the patio.
Breathlessly, I simply stood there, perfectly still, inhaling the humid air: It was fragrant with the scent of orange blossoms, honeysuckle, and sweet peas.
Climbing up strings that seemed to be suspended from the sky, the sweet peas hung like a brightly colored tapestry amidst the foliage of trees, shrubs, and ferns.
The healer I had seen before in my dream was sitting on a rocking chair in the middle of the patio.
She was much older than Delia and the women at the picnic; though how I knew this, I couldn't say.
She was rocking to and fro with an air of dreamy abandon.
I felt an anguishing pain that gripped my whole being, for I had the irrational certainty that her rocking movement was taking her farther and farther away from me.
A wave of agony, an indescribable loneliness engulfed me as I kept staring at her.
I wanted to cross the patio and hold her, but something about the patio's dark tiles, laid out in a most intricate pattern, held my feet in place.
"Esperanza," I finally managed to whisper in a voice so feeble it was barely audible even to myself.
She opened her eyes and smiled quite without surprise; as if she had been expecting me.
She rose and walked toward me.
She was not the size of a child, but about my height; five feet and two inches.
She was thin and fragile-looking, yet exuded a vitality that made me feel puny and shrunken.
"How happy I am to see you again." Her voice sounded sincere.
She motioned me to grab one of the rush chairs and sit beside her.
As I looked about me, I discovered the other women, including Delia.
They were sitting on rush chairs, half hidden by shrubs and trees: They, too, were watching me curiously.
Some of them smiled, while the others kept on eating tamales from the plates on their laps.
In the shady, green light of the patio- in spite of the mundane task of eating- the women appeared insubstantial; imaginary.
Each one of them was unnaturally vivid without being distinct.
They seemed to have absorbed the patio's greenish light, which had settled all around us like a transparent fog.
The fleeting but awesome idea that I was in a house populated by ghosts crossed my mind.
"Would you like to eat something?" Esperanza asked me. "Delia has made the most delicious food you can imagine."
"No, thank you," I murmured in a voice that didn't sound like my own.
Seeing her questioning expression, I added feebly, "I'm not hungry."
I was so nervous and agitated that even if I had been starving I wouldn't have been able to swallow a bite.
Esperanza must have sensed my fear. She leaned toward me and patted my arm reassuringly. "What is it that you want to know?"
"I thought I had seen you in a dream," I blurted out, then, noticing the laughter in her eyes, added, "Am I dreaming now?"
"You are, but you are not asleep," she replied, enunciating her words slowly and precisely.
"How can I be dreaming and not be asleep?"
"Some women can do that with great ease," she maintained. "They can be dreaming and not be asleep.
"You are one of those women.
"Others have to work a lifetime to accomplish that."
I sensed a tinge of admiration in her voice, yet I wasn't in the least flattered.
On the contrary: I was more worried than ever. "But how is it possible to dream without sleeping?" I insisted.
"If I explain to you how it is possible, you won't understand it," she pronounced. "Take my word for this: It's much better to postpone the explanations for the time being."
Again she patted my arm and a gentle smile lit up her face. "For the moment it's enough for you to know that, for you, I am the one who brings dreams."
I didn't think it was enough, but I didn't dare to tell her so.
Instead, I asked her, "Was I awake when you cured me of my nightmares? And was I dreaming when I sat outside in the field with Delia and all the others?"
Esperanza regarded me for a long moment then nodded sagely, as if she had decided to reveal some monumental truth. "You're too dumb to see the mystery of what we do."
She said this so matter-of-factly; so nonjudgmentally that it didn't occur to me to take offense, or to attempt any kind of rebuttal.
"But you could make me see it, couldn't you?" I pleaded eagerly.
The other women giggled: It wasn't a mocking sound but a murmuring that echoed all around me like a muffled chorus.
The sound didn't seem to come from the women but from the shadows of the patio.
Rather than a giggle, it was a whisper; a delicate warning that not only made me lose my thrust, but erased my troubling doubts; my desire to know.
And then I knew, without a shadow of doubt, that I had been awake and dreaming both times.
It was a knowledge that I couldn't explain, however.
It was something beyond words.
Yet, after a few moments, I felt compelled to dissect my realization, to put it all into some kind of logical framework.
Esperanza regarded me with apparent pleasure.
Then she said, "I'm going to explain to you who we are and what we do."
She prefaced her elucidation with an admonition: She warned me that whatever she had to tell me wasn't easy to believe. Therefore, I had to suspend judgment and hear her out without interruptions; without questions:
"Can you do that?"
"Naturally," I shot back.
She was silent for a moment, her eyes appraising me thoughtfully.
She must have sensed my uncertainty and the question that was about to burst from my lips.
"It isn't that I don't want to answer your questions," she maintained. "It's rather that at this time it will be impossible for you to understand the answers."
I nodded, not in agreement, but afraid that if so much as a peep came out of me she would stop talking altogether.
In a voice that was but a soft murmur, she told me something that was both incredible and fascinating.
She said that she was the spiritual descendant of sorcerers who lived in the valley of Oaxaca millennia before the Spanish conquest.
Esperanza was silent for a long time.
Her eyes, fixed on the bright, multicolored, sweet peas, seemed to reach nostalgically into the past.
Esperanza continued, "As it is for me, the part of those sorcerers' activities pertinent to you is called dreaming."
"Those sorcerers were men and women who possessed extraordinary dreaming powers, and performed acts that defied the imagination."
Hugging my knees, I listened to her.
Esperanza was a brilliant raconteuse and a most gifted mimic: Her face changed with each turn of her explanation.
It was at times the face of a young woman, at other times an old woman's; or it was the face of a man, or that of an innocent and impish child.
She said that millennia ago, men and women were the possessors of a knowledge that allowed them to slip in and out of our normal world.
And thus they divided their lives into two areas: the day and the night.
During the day they conducted their activities like everyone else: They engaged in normal, expected, everyday behavior.
During the night, however, they became dreamers.
They systematically dreamed dreams that broke the boundaries of what we consider to be reality.
Again she paused, as though giving me time to let her words sink in.
"Using the darkness as a cloak," she went on, "they accomplished an inconceivable thing: They were able to dream while they were awake."
Anticipating the question I was about to voice, Esperanza explained that to be dreaming while they were awake meant that they could immerse themselves in a dream that gave them the energy necessary to perform feats that stagger the mind while they were perfectly conscious and awake.
Because of the aggressive mode of interaction at home, I never developed the ability to listen for very long. If I couldn't meddle with direct, belligerent questions, any verbal exchange, no matter how interesting, was meaningless to me.
Now, unable to argue, I became restless. I was dying to interrupt Esperanza.
I had questions, but to get answers; to have things explained to me was not the thrust of my urge to interrupt.
What I wanted to do was to give in to my compulsion to have a shouting match with her in order to feel normal again.
As if privy to my turmoil, Esperanza stared at me for an instant and then signaled me to speak. Or I thought she had given me such a command.
I opened my mouth to say- as usual- anything that came to my mind even if it wasn't related to the subject. But I couldn't say a word.
I struggled to speak and made gargling sounds to the delight of the women in the background.
Esperanza resumed talking, as if she hadn't noticed my futile efforts.
It surprised me to no end that she had my undivided attention.
She said that the origins of the sorcerers' knowledge could be understood only in terms of a legend:
A superior being commiserating with the terrible plight of man- to be driven as an animal by food and reproduction- gave man the power to dream and taught him how to use his dreams.
"Legends, of course, tell the truth in a concealed fashion," she elucidated:
"The legends' success in concealing the truth rests on man's conviction that they are simply stories.
"Legends of men changing into birds or angels are accounts of a concealed truth, which appears to be the fantasizing, or simply the delusions of primitive or deranged minds.
"So it's been the task of sorcerers for thousands of years to make new legends, and to discover the concealed truth of old ones.
"This is where dreamers come into the picture.
Women are best at dreaming. They have the facility to abandon themselves; the facility to let go.
"The woman who taught me to dream could maintain two hundred dreams."
Esperanza regarded me intently as if she were appraising my reaction which was complete stupefaction for I had no idea what she meant.
She explained that to maintain a dream meant that one could dream something specific about oneself and could enter into that dream at will. Her teacher, she said, could enter at will into two hundred specific dreams about herself.
"Women are peerless dreamers," Esperanza assured me:
"Women are extremely practical. In order to sustain a dream, one must be practical, because the dream must pertain to practical aspects of oneself.
"My teacher's favorite dream was to dream of herself as a hawk. Another was to dream of herself as an owl.
"So depending on the time of the day, she could dream about being either one, and since she was dreaming while she was awake, she was really and absolutely a hawk or an owl."
There was such sincerity and conviction in her tone and in her eyes, I was entirely under her spell.
Not for a moment did I doubt her.
Nothing she could have said would have seemed outlandish to me at that moment.
She further explained that in order to accomplish a dream of that nature, women need to have an iron discipline.
She leaned toward me and in a confidential whisper, as though she didn't want the others to overhear her, said, "By iron discipline I don't mean any kind of strenuous routine, but rather that women have to break the routine of what is expected of them.
"And they have to do it in their youth," she stressed, "And most important, with their strength intact.
"Often, when women are old enough to be done with the business of being women, they decide it's time to concern themselves with nonworldly or other-worldly thoughts and activities.
"Little do they know or want to believe that hardly ever do such women succeed." She gently slapped my stomach, as if she were playing on a drum. "The secret of a woman's strength is her womb."
Esperanza nodded emphatically, as if she had actually heard the silly question that popped into my mind: "Her womb?"
"Women," she continued, "must begin by burning their matrix.
"They cannot be the fertile ground that has to be seeded by men following the command of God himself."
Still watching me closely, she smiled and asked, "Are you religious by any chance?"
I shook my head.
I couldn't speak. My throat was so constricted I could scarcely breathe.
I was dumbstruck with fear and amazement, not so much by what she was saying, but by her change: If asked, I wouldn't have been able to tell when she changed, but all of a sudden her face was young and radiant: Inner life seemed to have been fired up in her.
"That's good!" Esperanza exclaimed. "This way you don't have to struggle against beliefs," she pointed out. "They are very hard to overcome.
"I was reared a devout Catholic. I nearly died when I had to examine my attitude toward religion." She sighed.
Her voice, turning wistful, became soft as she added, "But that was nothing compared to the battle I had to wage before I became a bona fide dreamer."
I waited expectantly, hardly breathing, while a quite pleasurable sensation spread like a mild electrical current through my entire body.
I anticipated a tale of a gruesome battle between herself and terrifying creatures.
I could barely disguise my disappointment when she revealed that she had to battle herself.
"In order to be a dreamer, I had to vanquish the self," Esperanza explained. "Nothing, but nothing, is as hard as that.
"We women are the most wretched prisoners of the self. The self is our cage.
"Our cage is made out of commands and expectations poured on us from the moment we are born.
"You know how it is. If the first born child is a boy, there is a celebration. If it's a girl, there is a shrug of the shoulders and the statement, 'It's all right. I still will love her and do anything for her.'"
Out of respect for the old woman, I didn't laugh out loud.
Never in my life had I heard statements of that sort. I considered myself an independent woman, but obviously, in light of what Esperanza was saying, I was no better off than any other woman.
And contrary to the manner in which I would have normally reacted to such an idea, I agreed with her.
I had always been made aware that the precondition of my being a woman was to be dependent. I was taught that a woman was indeed fortunate if she could be desirable so men would do things for her. I was told that it was demeaning to my womanhood to endeavor to do anything myself if that thing could be given to me. It was drilled into me that a woman's place is in the home with her husband and her children.
"Like you, I was reared by an authoritarian yet lenient father," Esperanza went on:
"I thought, like yourself, that I was free. For me to understand the sorcerers' way- that freedom didn't mean to be myself- nearly killed me. To be myself was to assert my womanhood. And to do that took all my time, effort, and energy.
"The sorcerers, on the contrary, understand freedom as the capacity to do the impossible, the unexpected- to dream a dream that has no basis, no reality in everyday life."
Her voice again became but a whisper as she added, "The knowledge of sorcerers is what is exciting and new.
"Imagination is what a woman needs to change the self and become a dreamer."
Esperanza said that if she had not succeeded in vanquishing the self, she would have only led a woman's normal life; the life her parents had designed for her; a life of defeat and humiliation; a life devoid of all mystery; a life that had been programmed by custom and tradition.
Esperanza pinched my arm.
I cried put in pain.
"You'd better pay attention," she reprimanded me.
"I am," I mumbled defensively, rubbing my arm: I had been certain that no one would notice my waning interest.
"You won't be tricked or enticed into the sorcerer's world," she warned me. "You have to choose, knowing what awaits you."
The fluctuations of my mood were astonishing to me because they were quite irrational. I should have been afraid. Yet I was calm, as if my being there were the most natural thing in the world.
"The secret of a woman's strength is her womb," Esperanza said and slapped my stomach once more.
She said that women dream with their wombs, or rather, from their wombs. The fact that they have wombs makes them perfect dreamers.
Before I had even finished the thought 'why is the womb so important?' Esperanza answered me.
"The womb is the center of our creative energy," she explained, "to the point that, if there would be no more males in the world, women could continue to reproduce.
"And the world would then be populated by the female of the human species only."
She added that women reproducing unilaterally could only reproduce clones of themselves.
I was genuinely surprised at this specific piece of knowledge.
I couldn't help interrupting Esperanza to tell her that I had read about parthenogenetic and asexual reproduction in a biology class.
She shrugged her shoulders and went on with her explanation. "Women, having then the ability and the organs for reproducing life, have also the ability to produce dreams with those same organs," she said.
Seeing the doubt in my eyes, she warned me, "Don't trouble yourself wondering how it is done. The explanation is very simple, and because it's simple, it's the most difficult thing to understand. I still have trouble myself.
"So in a true woman's fashion, I act: I dream and leave the explanations to men."
Esperanza claimed that originally the sorcerers she had told me about used to pass their knowledge on to their biological descendants or to people of their private choice, but the results had been catastrophic.
Instead of enhancing this knowledge, these new sorcerers, who had been selected by arbitrary favoritism, confabulated to enhance themselves.
They were finally destroyed, and their destruction nearly obliterated their knowledge.
The few sorcerers who were left then decided that their knowledge should never again be passed on to their descendants or to people of their choice but to those selected by an impersonal power, which they called the spirit.
"And now, all this brings us to you," Esperanza pronounced.
"The sorcerers of ancient times decided that only the ones who were pinpointed would qualify. You were pointed out to us. And here you are!
"You are a natural dreamer. It's up to the forces that rule us where you go from here.
"It's not up to you. Nor to us, of course.
"You can only acquiesce or refuse."
From the urgency in her voice, and the compelling light in her eyes, it was obvious that she had given this explanation in complete seriousness.
It was this earnestness that stopped me from laughing out loud. Also, I was too exhausted.
The mental concentration I had needed to follow her was too intense. I wanted to sleep.
She insisted I stretch my legs, lie down, and relax.
I did it so thoroughly that I dozed off.
When I opened my eyes, I had no idea how long I had slept.
I sought the reassuring presence of Esperanza or the other women.
There was no one with me on the patio. But I didn't feel alone: Somehow their presence lingered amidst the green all around me, and I felt protected.
A breeze rustled the leaves. I felt it on my eyelids, warm and soft. It blew around me, then passed over me the same way it was passing over the desert, quickly and soundlessly.
With my gaze fixed on the tiles, I walked around the patio trying to figure out its intricate design. To my delight, the lines led me from one rush chair to the other. I tried to recall who had sat in which chair, but hard as I tried, I couldn't remember.
I was distracted by a delicious scent of food, spiced with onions and garlic.
Guided by that smell, I found my way to the kitchen, a large rectangular room.
It was as deserted as the patio. And the bright tile designs adorning the walls reminded me of the patterns in the patio.
I didn't pursue the similarities, for I had discovered the food left on the sturdy wooden table standing in the middle of the room.
Assuming that it was for me, I sat down and ate it all. It was the same spicy stew I had eaten at the picnic: Warmed over, it was even tastier.
As I gathered the dishes to take them to the sink, I discovered a note and a drawn map under my place mat.
It was from Delia. She suggested I return to Los Angeles by way of Tucson, where she would meet me at a certain coffee shop specified on the map.
Only there, she wrote, would she tell me more about herself and her friends.