CHAPTER FOURTEEN #3
I was always the one to care for others first. It was my pride and my purpose.
But he seemed to always anticipate my needs, sacrificing himself for my comfort and well-being, and his care was like a war of attrition on my carefully constructed self-protecting boundaries.
I was the one that was supposed to be breaking through to him.
To soften him so I could convince him to let me go.
But I felt my resolve to keep him out lessen with every streak of lightning.
My nerves were shot and the cold seeped to my bones which left me shaking, uncontrollably.
“Sid-de-nee,” finally he spoke. The rain, though quieter now, persisted. He crept near, broaching a subject it seemed he’d been thinking about for a while. “We will stay warmer if we share the heat of our bodies.”
Oh great! “I’ll be fine,” I said sharply.
“Yet, I can hear your teeth chattering from the door.”
“I thought you were a savage man, and I should be frightened,” I said sarcastically.
“I am, and you should. But tonight, like every night in the jungle, is about survival…come,” he slowly slid in behind me, as if approaching a wild animal.
I let him wrap his arms around mine, allowed him to pull me into the space of his body.
I was stiff against him as the contradiction of desire warred in my body.
“‘If two lie together, then they have heat; but how can one be warm alone?’” he quoted softly, and I recognized it as scripture. “I, too, am cold,” he said.
I shivered as his skin touched mine, feeling myself relax ever so slowly, his warmth melting me against him, and I realized how tired I felt. Too tired to fight this.
We lay down, my head on his arm, his other arm draped across my body. He smelled of earth and rain, and the spicy musk of androstenol, the pheromone I knew was secreting from his body odor. I hated the way it made me feel drawn to him like I wasn’t in control of my own biology.
I wiggled to get comfortable and pressed my rear into the crevice his body made around mine. He hardened at my movements. A small, surprised smile pulled at my mouth, amused at the power of a woman’s body over a man’s. It seemed we were both victims of our biology.
“I am sorry,” he said, scooting away slightly. “It has been many years since a woman lay against me.”
“It’s ok.” I laughed, wanting to make him feel less embarrassed, and he joined me. We enjoyed a moment of mirth breaking through the tension that had built around us the last few hours.
“Do you think you can sleep?” He asked.
“I’ll try.”
“This cave and storm has made me remember a time I was lost as a boy at night in the jungle.”
“What happened?” I murmured. We shifted a bit until we were comfortable.
“I was only eight wet seasons and practicing with my bow. I chased my prey, a cuscus, too far from the village when a storm like this one came on me.”
“What did you do?”
His voice was soothing, and with the warmth of his body settling my shivers, I could feel my limbs grow heavy with sleep.
“I ran for shelter, finding the deve, a platform we use for our dead and funeral rituals. I hid beneath it, scared and cold. I saw something coming toward me, and I saw it was someone and I knew it was my mother, though I have never seen her before. There was light all around her and she say to me ‘grace will come to you.’ She was like a ghost, but I heard her in the storm whisper to me. Maybe I fell asleep,” I felt him shrug beneath my head, “maybe I dreamed her, but I have not forgotten her words all these years later.”
Grace will come to you. I said it silently in my head. “What do you think it means?”
“That is what I cannot figure out, for grace has not come to me, only pain. Everyone I have loved…” he stopped for a beat, and I sensed his apprehension at sharing something so intimate, but he continued, “Everyone who has loved me has been taken away. There has been no grace, only loss.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. I knew, too well, the pain he described, and “I’m sorry” didn’t feel like enough after such an intimate admission. So I kept quiet, reaching my hand to squeeze his arm in reassurance, if nothing else.
He pulled me closer, tucking me to him like I was before, and I felt an odd sense wash over me. I felt…safe. Respected. Treasured even, and in return I felt gratitude and something like admiration for the man who lay behind me.
He was young and carried the burden of a whole people group on his shoulders, but despite the heaviness of responsibility, he was full of life and had an energy that vibrated off him in a palpable way.
Practically a stranger, and a savage one at that, but I didn’t feel reservations about him.
In fact, I felt secure in his presence like an old friend I hadn’t seen in years, picking up right where we left off.
I didn’t understand it, but something was there—a strange familiarity, a kindred spirit—but trying to analyze how he made me feel required more energy than I currently had to spare.
It was in the cocoon of these words and the sound of Jahnu’s soft, rhythmic snoring, that I finally drifted off to sleep.