May We Be Forgiven

introduce her to Londisizwe, and she shakes his hand.
    “Are you enjoying your trip?” he asks.
    “It’s amazing,” she says.
    “I’m so glad,” Londisizwe says, holding on to Ashley’s hand.
    “What has been your favorite part?”
    She pauses. “I liked lighting the candles on Friday night, and then when everyone sang ‘Wimoweh.’”
    “All good things,” he says, nodding. Londisizwe lets go of her hand; she runs back into the game.
    “She has been sad a long time,” the medicine man says.
    “She’s okay,” I say.
    Londisizwe looks at me as though I am refusing to hear him. “Does she do well at school?”
    “It’s complicated,” I say.
    “She is afraid, she worries what will happen to her. And the heavy boy …”
    “Ricardo,” I say.
    “Ricardo needs to be trained. He is overflowing with energy, which he controls by eating heavy foods to slow down. He should do karate or swordfighting until he becomes himself.”
    “How do you know all that?”
    “Some things you can see just by looking,” he says.
    “Tell me more.”
    “Nate needs to go more gently. He uses anger to push himself forward, but at some point he will collapse, he needs to find a food more nourishing than anger.”
    I nod, thinking this guy really does know something. And then he turns his eyes on me. He asks me to stick out my tongue, he sniffs my breath—which I imagine smells like hot dog and mustard. He nods, as if thinking about how best to say what he has seen.
    “You almost died,” Londisizwe says. “You may feel okay right now, but you are not okay inside. You are holding something foul—it needs to come out, and you are afraid to let it go. It is something from long ago; you have kept it like a companion so you don’t feel so alone, but now you have a family, and in order to be healthy, it needs to come out.”
    I nod, knowing that he is right. My ability to describe my experience is limited, with the nuances unarticulated. How does anyone explain himself? It’s as though all I can do is grunt and hope that, from the intonation, you might understand. I could blame the stroke, but I would be lying. How can I tell anyone that there has always lived within me a rusty sense of disgust—a dull, brackish water that I suspect is my soul?
    “What is it that needs to come out?” I ask Londisizwe.
    “That is my question to you,” he says. “It is something that has kept you from life. I would like to give you something to clear out the old. We will start with a tea—it will give you strong dreams and wind, but you must continue with it for four days. You will feel much worse before you feel better.”
    The idea of feeling much worse before feeling better doesn’t exactly make me jump up and down and say, Let’s start now. “What do you mean by wind?” I ask.
    “Clouds of smoke from your stomach,” Londisizwe says. “But no matter how you feel you must keep drinking it until the smoke stops, and then you will feel notably lighter of spirit. We will start now,” he says. “I will make the tea.” Londisizwe leaves.
    I focus on the soccer game.
    Twenty minutes later, Londisizwe returns with a large mug. I drink the tea, which tastes earthy, heavy, like boiled peat moss and mushrooms. “What is it made of?” I ask, in part to stall for time between sips.
    “I cannot tell you,” Londisizwe says. “Because if I told you I would have to kill you.” He smiles. I see that he has only four teeth in his mouth—the front four, and there are gaping holes on either side. He laughs. “Just kidding,” he says.
    Forty-five minutes later, I am overcome with exhaustion. I have no choice but to lie down; I am not sure if it is the tea or the fact that the bar mitzvah is over, but it feels like a lifetime of exhaustion, like something is draining out of me. I go back to the room and sleep for hours. My dreams are uncomfortable, vivid, in incredible color—as if supersaturated. They are so intense that while I am having them I’m sure I will never forget them. And then I wake, like I’m drunk, and I remember nothing—well, almost nothing. There are strange fragments: Like, I am at a meeting with a group of men; we are sitting in an office and as they are talking I realize that it is the 1960s and I am in a suite and the men who are talking are Nixon’s men and I am working for Nixon, and the men all turn and look at me, waiting expectantly for something. And then there is one with my father dancing around