Dream Journal, 4
Has your dead grandmother ever visited you in a dream? Have you knelt and prayed at the alter of your sins for a chance to scramble the past, to start again? Can you say goodbye and mean it?
“En las noches estoy / soñando en ti
pensando en tu amor / mi dulce ilusión
solo para mi…”
—”Dulce Sueños”, by Los Diablos Rojos
Only in my dreams can I kick the legs out from time and fall back, eyes closed. In waking life, the past is the one direction closed off from us, but this has never stopped me from trying in vain to relive certain loves. Relove certain lives. But there is no shame in the dark husk of sleep. No end to the dissolution of that thin space separating me from the sentence that has just passed and gone.
Where else can I find myself ten years younger and fidgeting in my middle school seat, surrounded by friends I haven’t spoken to in years? The classroom plays out in perfect order, crystalline memories of me sitting in the front, answering questions through a battlefield of gay jokes and Axe bombs. Anthony sucks his teeth from a corner of the class, fresh out of the barbershop and flicking balled-up math quizzes which he aced onto my desk. And there’s Aaron, arguing with Calijah over Messi or Ronaldo, Messi or Ronaldo? The question becomes nuclear war, and the room erupts with prideful cries. Desks are flipped over, and I feel my waking body smile at the innocence, the rich memories preserved in the clear amber of my mind.
For these reasons, dreams of the past sing in my blood like some sweet venom I can't stop drinking. So tempting, to fall back into the wide embrace of the childhood self that has not yet come to terms with reality. It’s even worse in the dreams—there, the past can take many forms, and shapeshift itself to fill my hunger, my desires.
Arguments replay themselves, but instead of walking away, I speak my mind for once! I show them the truth and the applause roars on. The curtains fall. Alarms ring, and I show up to work early, remembering not to make that one mistake. Love finds me in the right way. I say the right thing. The dreams make everything right, covering the pain of truth with that sugary coat of lies I like to lullaby myself with.
Of course, I can’t blame the cast for playing out their parts. Each dream person seems to me another face in a deck of cards, a finite number of chance arrangements that lead to the end of a rigged game—a game that I always win. I used to think dreams of the past give me a second chance at life. Recently, though, I’ve come to wonder about this assumption, this seductive illusion of control.
There is one dream I keep thinking about, one that visited me last week. In it, I am clearing a path through a jungle that has no end. Sweat flicks off my arms as I swing the machete. The sun is prickly-warm and set in a low haze, hanging over my head like a heavy crown of distant memory. In the shadows, I hear the clicking and cawing of unseen birds, and I think of what snakes might lie just beyond my machete’s reach. I wipe my brow and swing the blade across tangled leaves and twisted vines, but they seem to regrow as soon as I cut. There is something wrong with this jungle—I blink, and suddenly, the plants melt and reform into something new and strange. The flat palm fronds of the low-level brush freeze over, as I step from tropical air into a cold and biting tundra, glazed with the ghost layers of powdered snow and pine needles.
I blink, and the scenery shifts again, tilting and crashing as if the world were a broad ship traversing unsteady waters. The dark-green pines stretch and enfold into the mountains, and before my eyes, two mountains of locked ice sprout on either side of me, making a valley of the path I chose. The machete dissolves in my hands and I feel my jaw tighten with the urge to escape. I push deeper, fumbling mindlessly through this capricious land before coming upon a river’s edge, inlaid with a dark and supple delta that gives way under my feet.
There is little time for me to think before I see someone standing on the water. She hovers just beyond the edge of the delta, facing me in such a way that the evening sun shades her eyes, her figure circumscribed by the green band of thinning trees across the river. There is not even time for fear before I warily step forward and fall to my knees, recognizing her.
Her name is Mamá Irma, and she is my dead maternal grandmother. There is no other way to say such things. Although I have not seen her in a decade, I cannot mistake her cloud of gray and stubborn hair, her varicose arms and strong, commanding eyes. When I take a second look, I realize she is not the grandmother from my life—in this dream, Mamá Irma is dressed in dark pants and a floral blouse, looking younger than I have ever known her to be. It's as if her image has been cut-out and formed from one of the pictures my mother keeps in a leather-bound photo album beneath her bed.
My tears come without any warning or shame. The world bends around me, and I begin to feel as if I were in some kind of parable, the unwilling subject of a miracle that I could only ask for in a dream. There are so many things I want to say to her. Too many things, but instead, I can’t help but sob and crumple into the tense clay of the riverbank.
It suddenly feels very important that I stop making noise and let Mamá Irma speak. Any and all words she says must be conveyed through the most silent air, so that I may take her messages across the border between life and death. Somehow, I stop crying and crawl to the edge of the delta, noticing for the first time the quiet movement of her lips, the soft wrinkles of her cheeks fluttering in the breeze.
It is here that I realize I cannot discern anything she is saying, so I draw closer. My feet are almost in the river as I strain to listen to her, but still, I cannot hear her. I see her lips move around invisible syllables, but it’s like the wind is catching her voice before it reaches me across the water. Goddamnit, I think, I’ve got to get closer! However, before I can decide to dive into the churning river water, I hear the jumbled voices of other people on this riverbank. People all around me! They appear within the space of two frames of film that are spliced together—one minute, it's just the dirt keeping me company. Then, I am beset with clusters of brown-skinned people clamoring along shore, some kneeling, some whispering and holding each other as they cry.
I jump back and look wildly around the many-faced crowds of supplicants. I try to pick out people, anybody from my waking life that I can recognize and speak to. They don’t seem to notice me at all as they pray towards Mamá Irma. It isn’t long before I hang my head, realizing that I don’t know any of them, none at all. Who are these people? Are they also family? Have they also waded through the jungle of death, hoping to find Mamá Irma waiting for them on the other side? Is that why I don’t recognize them? Is that why?
If they are all dead, I ask myself, then where the hell am I? I crouch down into the sagging delta soil and flicker between flight or fight. The urge to vomit rises, then falls inside my quivering stomach. But, instead of feeling sick, I feel deflated, balled out. The dream isn’t even over, and already, I am unable to remember what Mamá Irma says. What she’s saying is locked away from me. Even in my dreams, I am still alone, still incapable of listening to the words of both the living and the dead I know.
Before the dream ends, I look across the river at her, and see her husband floating at her side. Papá Erasmo. He is younger too, I realize, still holding onto his head of white hair, wearing a neatly-pressed suit that I remember seeing in a video of my mother’s graduation.
He says nothing but he looks at me, long enough to make me weep and kneel. I would like to stand up and talk to him, tell him and Mamá Irma about my stories, about my little life and all the love that I have for them both, how I never got the chance to say goodbye. How a word like love can never even come close to the shade of fire that burns up my soul when I think of them.
But I don’t say anything, and I know, as surely as I know I will never talk to them again, that by not speaking I am letting go of my control, that I cannot go on loving them and hating myself for what I could never be. I let go of the shore, which is now burdened with the silence of us sinners. We all watch as Mamá Irma finishes her wordless sermon. She turns as Papá Erasmo takes her hand, and together, they both walk back into that vast and dark forest just beyond the river’s touch.