My best friend and I met Raven in one of our first classes at Berkeley. It was a course on the indigenous tribes of Sudan that focused on the Nuer. We took the class because it would satisfy one of our liberal education requirements. We learned that the professor was a political refugee who had been driven out by latest coup leaders who distrusted academicians, especially those who spoke out against the neo-colonial powers that preferred to invest in captive nations managed by their paid bullies.
Professor Ibrahim was making his first remarks when a female student raised her hand and asked the professor if it was true that that the CIA had helped engineer the latest coup. The professor asked her to stand so that he could respond and the class let out a low gasp as she rose from her chair. She was a tiny person, maybe five feet tall, had a striking tan face and jet black pony tails that reached her waist. She was dressed in what looked like a sack, and only had one hand, a left hand. Professor Ibrahim asked her why the question was relevant to the class. She said her name was Raven and that as a Hopi woman she understood what it meant to be pushed out by invaders and forced to live with strangers. Professor Ibrahim put down his lecture notes and spent the next forty-five minutes talking about the many ancient and current foreign powers that had invaded his country and the legacy of despair and death that they left behind as their markers.
After class I followed Raven and told her that she was gutsy for asking her question and that as a Chicano that my people and culture had also been invaded and degraded. We spoke for a few minutes and she asked me if I wanted to share a bite and a joint after classes at her apartment that she shared with three other Indian girls. She gave me her address and I biked over to her apartment not knowing what to expect.
Her apartment was a converted garage with a tacked on outhouse. There were three cots side by side next to the only window that faced west. They didn’t have a regular kitchen as she told me that they made do with a large beat-up grill on wheels located on what had been the driveway. There was a hose next to the grill along with a few pans and pots on the ground. They had invented urban camping and I was impressed at the simplicity of it all.
Raven introduced me to her roommates who just smiled and then walked out the door. She said it was nothing personal as they were not use to having guys in their place although it was OK with them as I wasn’t white. There were only a few old chairs in the room and we sat down on two of them, a few feet away from each other. She asked me about my family and why Berkeley and I told her that I grew up just a few miles away from campus but that it was another world. I asked her about her family and she told me that she was from Norther Arizona and that her family were sheep people and that she was the first one from her family to finish high school and go to college. I told her that was the same with me. Then she raised up her left hand and said that she lost her right hand cutting down a dead tree and that it had been her favorite hand but she had learned to use the left one pretty good. I didn’t know what to say and just nodded my head.
She smiled and asked if I wanted to smoke. I was not a virgin to weed and thought she would offer a joint. I was blown over when she walked to a wood chest against the wall and pulled out what looked like a homemade pipe with a really long stem. She put it down next to me and then went to one of the cots, reached under and pulled out a mason jar filled with something that did not look like the grass I was used to. She walked back and filled the pipe. She said that it was a special mix that her family assembled from plants that grew on their grazing land. She said that it had been blessed by the Hopi elders and that it could only be shared with those who wanted to see beyond the light.
While I was interested in the smoke I asked her to light up first to make sure it was not spiked with something weird. She took the pipe and inhaled long and slow. She kept it in for a long time and slowly let it out without coughing. It was my turn and I looked straight at her as she passed it to me. I took a slow drag. It did not smell or taste like pot and I did my best not to cough. We sat there wordless for what seemed hours. She looked into my eyes and said nothing. I looked at my hand and focused on a small throb in one of my veins. I felt my self moving with the blood in my veins. It started off as a small creek of memory and then became a small river moving through my organs. Then it swept me to my heart where it cascaded into a pool and mixed with other rivers. I got freaked out, slowly roused myself, said nothing to Raven, and headed out to my car. I knew I had to get somewhere that was calling me.
It was past midnight and it took me a lifetime to find my MG. I could not focus on where I had parked it. It was a 58 MG convertible and was my prize possession although the transmission was shot as the gears ate each other even when I shifted well. Somehow, I did a brain dump and somehow made my way back to the car that had been parked outside Raven’s place. I knew I had to clear my head. I drove in circles for what seemed an eternity and finally saw a road sign that said Tilden Park was about three miles away. I decided to go to Tilden Park, find an empty campsite or parking spot and search for my sanity. I had gone less than a mile on the way to Tilden when the car ran out of gas. I saw a gas station at the end of the block. It was dark with no lights on and no one around to help me push the car to the station. There was no moon and the stars seemed to be fighting each other for space as I took a century to push my car to the station. It took me an eternity of swearing and sweating but I pushed the car to the nearest gas pump.
The station was deserted and I sat down in the car to catch my breath. I had been doing yoga for about two years and did nothing but focus on my breathing. Just as I was reaching a small level of self-control a light above the pump went on. It was a delusion or maybe a miracle but I knew that something momentums was rising up to bother my soul. From the back of the station, an apparition, a cadaver of a man, walked towards me. I was frozen in place as he walked to the car door. He stood there looking at me. His pupils eyes were huge and his face looked like a sculpture of a starved martyr. I was terrified to look at him directly so I stared at his bristly white eye brows and lashes. Those eye lashes moved in a loop above his eyes and the little snakes were calling me. I tore my look to his eyes and he said “I’ve been waiting for you. Ready?”
I was not ready. I jumped out of my seat, abandoned the car, ran down the street and found a temporary refuge at a bus stop several blocks away. Several hours later just as the sun was rising the first bus of the day came. I jumped onboard, not caring where it was going. It took me several hours to make my way back to my apartment and had an ugly sleep until late afternoon. I needed to get back to reality and find my car. It took me several hours of riding my bike up and down the streets in the direction of Tilden Park before I found my car next to a gas station that had real people at the pumps.
Raven and I saw each other in class a few days after my lost drive. After class ended, she asked me if I wanted to smoke with her again and I said “maybe, but next time I’ll just chill in place.”
