The Wild Kindness by Bett Williams;

Author:Bett Williams;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 2)
Published: 2020-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

21

I am a saint woman, says

I am a trumpet woman, says

I am a drum woman, says

I am a woman born, says

I am a woman fallen into the world, says

That is your Book, says

That is your Book, says

Book of sap, says

Book of dew, says

Fresh Book, says

Book of clarity, says

—MARÍA SABINA

There in Bell Mountain, says. There is the dirty fright. There is the garbage, says. There is the claw, says. There is the terror, says. Where the day is, says. Where the clown is, says. The Lord Clown, says.

—UNKNOWN MAZATEC CURANDERO*

BETH’S FATHER DIED after a long, debilitating illness. My own father died three months later after a colon surgery. He was ninety-one. We knew this was part of why we met, so that we could enter the state of being fatherless together. People find it disturbing when you’re not particularly sad about your dad dying. Not us, though. The mushrooms, too, were very ho-hum about the whole ordeal.

You never know what makes them show up with bells on—batshit crazy for corduroy pants, ambivalent about eclipses.

That’s not to say I wasn’t totally out of it after he died. In my sleepwalking state, I managed to buy a house in the coal town down south with my inherited money. Beth and I opened a store there that sold psilocybin T-shirts, bath salts, and picture frames. Anyway, a whole different life.

I had always told myself that after my father died, I would go on a trip somewhere. I decided to go to Huautla de Jiménez, Mexico, home of the late María Sabina.

I approached the journey with ambivalence. I was not a traveler, nor would I suddenly sprout the limbs needed to become one. I spent the first night in a hotel in the Mexico City airport, feeling kidnapped by my own choices. It was in this void that I received word about Kai Wingo. She’d suffered a stroke and was in a coma. The outcome was unclear.

In Mexico City, I boarded the bus that would take me to the village of Huautla de Jiménez. It was an eight-plus hour ride along a windy mountain road. All the roads were made of dirt back when the hippies first came. I read that a hippie, high on too many mushrooms, ran through the marketplace naked, chasing a chicken. When he caught it, he bit off its head. The town had never seen such a spectacle before.

The bus passed through the gates of the city, now watched over by a statue of María Sabina herself. Every taxi was marked with her name and stamped with colorful images of mushrooms. I stepped onto the soil cautiously, fully aware I was just another gringa tourist, here to pay homage to my saint. I checked into what was basically the only hotel in town, the Santa Julia. It appeared to function specifically as an outpost for tourists seeking the mushrooms, and more recently—because of Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia—Salvia divinorum. A few came for the vast network of caves beneath the city, but even the caves were a loaded topic.

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