When we reach the stones, I blurt it out.
My mom might come home soon!
That’s great, Etan.
She spins around.
So are you feeling better? I ask
Blankie flies in the crisp air.
A little bit—I mean my skin is red but my eye is smaller today.
But what I want to know is what makes a good, shy boy like you
skip school and come all the way out here?
I open my backpack
and it feels like bolts of gentle lightning
surging through me.
I find the words right away.
I want you to be able to sing.
Malia looks at me for a long time
and for once she’s the one who doesn’t talk.
People need to know you.
And if she can do it,
then maybe I can do it.
I take the jar out of the bag,
set it on the flat surface of a Sitting Stone.
What is that?
She touches the clay jar, smells it.
What is this?
Is this?
Yeah, I breathe out, it’s the real clay,
my grandfather’s clay,
well, his great-great …
you know what I mean.
She tries to lift the jar.
It’s heavy, she says.
Yeah.
It’s really, really old.
from the Dead Sea.
I try to think about what my grandfather
might say or do here.
So this might make your skin feel better
and a bunch of other stuff.
She nods, quietly whispers,
Ooookay …
She breathes for a while.
Okay. A tear falls down her cheek,
lands on Blankie.
I open the jar, try to think holy thoughts,
fill my head with prayers I know,
fill my mind
with the sound
of my grandfather’s stories,
my mother’s voice.
We both peer into the jar.
A small blob of clay sits at the very bottom,
That’s it? she says. Does it smell weird?
We put our noses close;
it smells like a basement, or a forest floor after a long rain.
I put my finger into the jar, press into the clay.
It smushes down at first, but then it feels like a pin prick.
Ow! I pull it out.
What? she says, puts her finger in,
and she feels it, too.
Wow! What is that?
I don’t know, I say. Energy?
But there is hardly anything in there.
My grandfather told me we need to mix it with the native clay.
This is your place, your pool, your friends who are trees,
so take some clay from the pool and mix it with the clay in the jar.