“Happy birthday, you two,” Savanna said. “How old are you, Yvette?”
“Seven.” The girl that answered had curly, black hair over a coffee-brown face with light brown eyes. She wore a necklace of white snail shells over a bare chest.
Savanna’s hair had not been cut in a couple of years and was half gray, mostly at the roots. It splayed wildly over a leather hide beaten thin and soft with hours of work and sewn into a shirt. Her skirt was the same. The trio sat outside a small building of vertical small logs topped by a roof of palm fronds and long grass. They were in a clearing surrounded by trees and bushes. A line of hollowed trunks brought water, which fell half a meter into a pebble-lined culvert that carried it away to a wandering creek audible but not visible in the distance. “What would like for your birthday, Mikey?”
“I want to know how old you are, Mom.”
“I still don’t remember. I have been alive forever, it seems. So many years that you can’t count.”
“I can count to a thousand.” The boy was towheaded with pale olive skin, Maricia’s blue eyes and her Danish jaw, and Raul’s brow and Spanish nose.
“It’s more than you can count. Is there anything else you want?”
“I want to hear stories today.”
“Do you have one particular story you want to hear?”
“The one about the evil man.”
“There used to be a lot of evil men, Michael. Which one do you want to hear about?”
“The fallen angel.”
“I don’t want to tell that story again, sweetie.” She had created stories of the journey, of the changes they went through, of good and evil. “It makes me sad.”
“How do people become evil?” Yvette asked, playing with a crude hemp doll.
“They think more about themselves than about others.”
Yvette stopped arranging the coarse long hair and thought for a moment. “Don’t we all do that?”
“That is quite a question for a seven-year-old!”
“Well, don’t we?”
“That is how we start in life. But as you get older, you learn that love is placing someone’s life above your own. Love is serving someone else before yourself. Evil people cannot put others first. Or maybe they get tired of it. Love takes work. It’s a happy sacrifice and much more than just a feeling.”
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, Yvette, and you, too, Mikey.”
“I would give up something for you,” Yvette said.
“What would you give up for me?” Savanna’s gnarled fingers stroked the dark face of the brown-haired girl, looking for an answer in her deep brown eyes. She longed for a mirror to see how her daughter resembled her. She couldn’t remember how her own face looked.
“Dinner. Well, maybe lunch. Yeah, lunch.”
“That is so nice of you.”
“I was kidding, Mom. I would die for you. I would.”
“That’s so sweet. But if you did, that would ruin everything I have done. Because, Yvette, I have already given up my life for you and for many others including your children, your children’s children, and their children for all the years in the future.”
“You’re not dead, Mom,” said Mike with a tone that said “stupid.” “You haven’t given your life.”
“I gave up the life I lived far away to bring you to this place and to make way for others to live and not die. So I have traded one kind of life for the one I’m now living. The people who came with me gave up their lives for this,” she said, waving at the world around them, “and never got to see it. They love you too.”
“Loved. They’re dead.” Yvette frowned.
“Real love is timeless. I, more than anyone, know this.” She looked far away. “Today is a good time to visit the grave. Do you want to go for a little walk?”
“I guess so,” Yvette said. Mike agreed. They started on a well-worn path around a patch of fruit trees that were about as tall as Savanna. They stopped to pluck some flowers at the edge of a field of planting, all the product of hours of clearing and difficult labor. They disappeared on the trail into the jungle. Fifteen minutes later, they came to a cairn of smooth stones set on a hill that overlooked a wide, smooth river. Below was a grassy field with an oblong pit within. A dome of pocked metal gleamed from the center. It was late afternoon, and clouds crossed the sun frequently. Savanna placed an armful of flowers on the pile, kissed her fingertips, and touched one of the rocks, discolored at that spot.
“I miss you, Maricia,” she whispered.
“Why do you talk to her?” Mike asked.
Savanna answered after thinking for a moment. “When you speak with reverence to those that have died, to those who are not with you, it’s not talk. It is a prayer.”
“So you pray to her?”
“I guess I do.”
“When you die, we can pray to you, then,” said Yvette.
“We have plenty of time to think that through,” replied Savanna. “This is where you were born and where Mother Maricia died—down in that sunken part. The ship we came in sank into that depression,” she said as she pointed.
“I remember it bigger than this,” Mike said, pointing.
“It keeps sinking. I think it’ll be covered up after another flood.”
“What happens when you die?” Yvette sat on a stone, looking deep into the pile.
“We are made of earth. When we die, our bodies return to the earth.”
“What about our thoughts?” Yvette looked sadly up to Savanna.
“You are full of questions today, young lady. What about thoughts? Some thoughts might live forever. Maybe the essence of a person goes on forever. I still feel Maricia and Lucinda with me. I feel a little bit of Raul and Leila. My mother, father, and Sasha are still here.” She placed a hand over her heart. “Some people where I came from call that part of someone that lives after death a soul. I don’t have a better word for it.”
Mike turned back from the river and faced the memorial shrine. He got close and put a hand on one of the stones. He whispered quietly, “I love you, Mom. I wish I could have known you. Mom Savanna, well, I love her too. I love the creek when it’s little. I like soft, warm rain, except when it goes on for days. I love the way clouds change as I watch. I love my life. Thank you for giving it to me.” He stepped away, solemn and dry-eyed. Not so with Savanna.
They walked back slowly, picking a couple of pieces of fruit for dinner on their way. It was growing dark. There was the usual warm breeze that tickled the leaves into rustic laughter as Savanna and the two naked children walked into their home.