Shame

remembered braking hard, stopping the Mustang just short of the cliff’s edge. The screams of the killer were still in his ear when he jumped out of the car and went in search of Lola.
    It was too dark and foggy to see her, so he yelled, and kept yelling until he heard a weak, “Here.”
    “Where?” he shouted.
    “Here,” she said.
    They repeated their calls. Caleb knew he was getting closer, just as he knew her voice was getting progressively weaker. Another, even more desperate game of Marco Polo, he thought.
    “Here.”
    The whisper in the darkness that was so close. He waved his arms in the mist, trying to push it away, trying to swim through it. And there she was.
    So much blood. The mist couldn’t hide that. He hovered around helplessly for a moment, then dropped to his knees. He didn’t know what to do, but at the same time he knew there was nothing he could do. So he held her.
    “Most of you have read the story of what happened that night,” Caleb said, “or at least versions purporting to be the story. I’d be dead now if it weren’t for Lola. She was the ultimate Good Samaritan. She took me in and believed in me, and in the end she saved my life.”
    It was her plan, all of it. Rehearsed and practiced on the drive up to the glider port.
    “When you were sick,” she said, “when you were delirious, you spoke in Elizabeth’s voice. Can you do that now?”
    “Yes.” Caleb didn’t have to think about it. He’d talked to her in person and listened to her recording for hours on end. Her voice was in his head.
    “Show me.”
    “We’re both Doubting Thomases,” he said. No. Elizabeth said it.
    “Pull over,” Lola said. “Find a place we can park.”
    He’d turned at the light and pulled into a parking lot on the UC San Diego campus.
    “Take off your clothes,” said Lola.
    “What?”
    “Osh-Tisch,” she said.
    The memory hurt, and the pain of it made Caleb remember his audience. “Many of you might not know that Lola was partIndian. I think that heritage was very important to her. As she lay dying, she told me that she was going to
Wakan Tanka,
the Great Mystery. I don’t know much about the Lakota religion. I only know that a great spirit has joined her ancestors.”
    No, he thought. Two great spirits wrapped in one.
    “Hush.”
    He tried to stop sobbing, tried to respect Lola’s wishes. Her voice in the night kept telling him there was no need to cry, kept offering him absolution for all of his guilt.
    “Hush,” she said again, but the word was offered to comfort him.
    Holding her in his arms, Caleb said, “You beat the bully.” And then he started crying again.
    “Hush,” she said for the third and last time, making the word sound like a gentle blessing.
    “Don’t let them bury me in these clothes,” she said. “And nothing black either. Make it like this mist. White lace.”
    “You’re not going—”
    “It’s all right,” she said. “I go to Wakan Tanka.”
    She struggled for another breath, then managed to say, “I’m only a quarter Lakota. I’m not even a real Indian....”
    It was Caleb’s turn to say, “Hush.” But he offered the sound in the spirit she had, a blessing to dispel all doubts.
    “You’re all brave,” he said, “a warrior like Osh-Tisch.”
    “No,” she said, gently chiding him, “I’m a Two-Spirit.” They both had a little laugh, and then she whispered, “Hanta yo,” and was gone.
    She went to meet Wakan Tanka with a smile.
    Later, Caleb learned “hanta yo” was a Lakota war chant that translated to, “The spirit goes ahead of us.” Both spirits, thought Caleb. He found strength in her last words and accompanying smile and passed on her smile to those who were gathered.
    “I only knew Lola for a short time, and yet there are so many things I feel I should say. Lola looked at the world differently thanmost, and I thank God for that. One of her eyes was feminine, and the other was masculine, and that gave her a unique perspective. She wasn’t judgmental, because she had been judged so harshly herself, and because of that, she didn’t automatically burden me with the sins of my father. I wish I could have been as nonjudgmental of her. I wish I could have done a lot of things differently. But if Lola taught me anything, it’s that we need to live in the present, instead of letting the shame from the past rule us.”
    Caleb sighed, shook his head, but then remembered her smile. She hadn’t been afraid of the Great