Voices Carry
Lori Hunt takes a long, strange trip into her own midlife heart, with a little help from the Nail Guru (and a mud brown shot of ayahuasca).
“I am Mother, I am Mother, I am Mother,” the voice said. Her resolve smacked my ass into the hardwood floor.
The mud-colored liquid stung on the way down, and I immediately regretted the swallow in the same way I regretted so many others in my life. Mouthfuls of shame, grief, unhappiness, guilt, and remorse washed over me once again. I said yes to ingesting an illegal substance and showed up to an acquaintance’s woodsy cottage in Pasadena with a floor pillow and a beach towel I found in the trunk of my car. Aficionados of “the medicine” will appreciate the lack of preparation on my part and nod in my direction, a recognition of the first-timer glow. Eleven others, experienced and equipped, arrived with sleeping bags, fluffy blankets, roll-up mattresses, and their sleep pillows to experience the medicine in five-star comfort.
I sat cross-legged on my Costco extra-plush beach towel and placed the euro-sized floor pillow on my lap. Not that I was self-conscious of my fifty-something belly, although there was that, always, but more I sensed I needed to seek some last comfort before possibly losing control of my bowels in front of a group of strangers. And where was my acquaintance anyway? It was her place, after all. I assumed she would greet me upon arrival, excited I had taken her up on the offer of exploring the medicine together, safely ensconced in her over-priced rental. I had known her for years. We often talked about her spiritual pursuits, and she became a quasi-guide for me; she was of the mind that people came into each other’s lives when they were needed most. I held on to that. It made sense at the time. We used to touch base every three weeks when she did my nails. She called herself the Nail Guru, and I was happy to listen to her adventures. She swore by ayahuasca even though she said the medicine had become tainted with dark energy. “It’s just not clean anymore,” she said once while she filed my nails. The air of the salon was suddenly full of foreboding, visions of dark forests and shady men committing terrible acts to make a profit clouded my judgement. I maybe should have listened to my own inside voice I was expert at ignoring.
My acquaintance finally made an appearance wearing a hippie skirt and crop top and made sure to make to eye contact with everyone. She had a great sense of style which I admired, and even though I also saw her “dark energy” at times when she would dig too deep and make my cuticles bleed, “You’re skin is so dry, you really should take cuticle care seriously,” I thought she might hug me and gift me with a really cool smudge stick, which was so her and also such a great gift to give out when people came to your home to do illegal drugs from the Amazon rain forest. When she made her way toward me, she noticed my meager belongings. “Oh, love, is that all you brought? Didn’t I tell you what you would need? It must have somehow slipped my mind. I’ll get you a blanket.” I nodded, grateful.
The living / dining room had been cleared of all its furnishings. I sat quietly on my flat pallet near the wall, watching the participants prepare their spaces, when the Shaman approached me. Shaman Georges. I was never sure how to pronounce it, so I just started referring to him in my mind as Shaman Gorgeous because he really was. He kneeled in front of me and told me not to resist, to go where the medicine led me. It sounded easy enough. Until it wasn’t.
When I closed my eyes, ancient serpents writhed and swirled while my body rocked back and forth. I clutched my purge container (a clear plastic Ziploc bowl with a blue lid I had to pay an extra $2.25 for upon arrival at Nail Guru’s abode) to my chest and tried in vain to comfort my mind. I fanned at my face with my hand, even though I wasn’t hot—a way to control the uncontrollable. From the thick black sponge that was now my brain, it squished, “I am Mother.” Abuelita, the voice was called. Abuelita’s insistence forced me to confront my life, and each time I told her I understood, she repeated her command, unwilling to accept anything other than one hundred percent compliance. I continued to self-soothe by rocking back and forth, ugly cried—when I looked in the mirror later that night, I had popped a blood vessel in my eye from all the focused urgent crying, I mean purging—and breathed so hard through my mouth I started to hyperventilate. Shaman’s wife, a truly lovely creature, knelt in front of me—how envious I was of her supple joints. She said, “Give me your hands.”
I stared back at her. Give you my hands?
My plastic hands were attached to my arms made of rubber and were now stretched out into the marble universe, trying to latch onto maternal energy and melt.
Obviously.
Her next request was more difficult: “Place your hands flat in front of you.”
I stared back at her. Lady, they’re plastic hands, with a bend at the knuckles.
She lifted my synthetic hands, shook a bottle, and sprayed. The cold water hit my palms and woke me the fuck up. I noticed Wifey’s braids, she really did look the part of Shaman Wife: twenties, pretty, an effortless seventies throw-back style, helping people her number two job, committed partner number one. Her kind gaze, non-judgmental, bore into me, and for the first time in Jesus, like five hours, someone saw me. I was rescued.
“Rub your hands together.”
Come again?
“Rub your hands together,” she repeated.
Still, nothing. It simply did not compute. She brought my hands together for me. “It’s like praying,” she said.
I can do this.
Then the kicker: “Now smell them.”
Why was she being so mean? So many steps. She pushed my hands to my face.
“Now breathe,” she said.
The scent hit my nostrils and traveled to the back of my skull. The black sponge calcified, and my thoughts returned—human lady thoughts. No more black serpent eel creatures. No more spinning.
Just then, my neighbor—Wait! I had a neighbor! She had been to my right the entire time. My neighbor tossed a crystal onto my borrowed blanket.
“It wants you. Your energy.”
I’m sorry?
“I had all my crystals lined up for protection and this one kept rolling off my cushion and onto your blanket. It was meant to be.”
Thank you.
I hoped my face conveyed my thanks because I hadn’t been able to speak since I knocked back the shot glass filled to the brim with the medicine like a party-girl pro. That moment had jettisoned me back to the nineties, sitting on a bar stool at The Hub in downtown Tampa, the smoke of clove cigarettes hung in the air, black clad theatre people crowding the bar for dollar drink night, and for a split second, I enjoyed the nineties in a way I never had when I was actually there.
My body decided it had had enough and lay down, robotic. I wrapped the blanket around my torso and up under my chin and clutched the crystal to my chest. I shivered, suddenly cold and sleepy, thankful for the simple gesture of a blanket. It was everything I needed. Abuelita’s voice echoed in the darkness: “This is what you need. This is what you need.” I floated in the black universe and slept.
My eyes opened to the sight of a skylight in the ceiling I hadn’t noticed it before. The vibrant green leaves of a large tree swayed in the wind, the branches flexible, moving with the breeze, not against it, scraping the skylight. The lovely browns of the bark—did I ever see all the hues in nature? And the sky, clear cerulean. I cried. At the beauty of it all. At myself for never noticing. I felt connected, like my body would rise and push through the skylight, and I would float over Pasadena, back to East Hollywood, back to my pillow-top mattress because, shit, my back ached from the hardwood floors. I ventured outside to pee because we weren’t allowed in the bathroom. Apparently, at the last ayahuasca gathering, there was a cloggage. I couldn’t get any more information on the matter other than “full-stop cloggage.” My guess is it was significant. Once I emptied my bladder in the toilet tent in the backyard, I sat on the grass—it was silky under my bare feet. I talked to my mother, who sat in an oak tree. Her feet dangled from the branch. She listened for three hours, and I shared with her all the things she had missed. I made her laugh, and for once, I didn’t cry when I said her name.
L. A. Hunt is passionate about lots of things. Her latest online search obsessions include books, coffee, zombies, outdoor living spaces, wireless bras, lip balm, zodiac signs as boba drinks, best wine patios, screenwriting hacks, doomsday prepping, urban gardening, Tokyo Owl Café, and Texas BBQ. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of CA, Riverside’s Palm Desert Low Residency Program, and serves as prose editor for Writers Resist. Read more at her Substack.
Image: White light by Ramses Cervantes
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So very fascinating
"for a split second, I enjoyed the nineties in a way I never had when I was actually there" - ohhhhh I enjoyed this!!