Orunla ©Eric K. Lerner
Yemaya and Orunla
©Eric K. Lerner
Orunla has a beautiful wife with melon-size breasts and child bearing hips. Orunla's wife's eyes shine in face illuminated by tenderness and sweetened by a ripe bud of a mouth...A handful of shells reveal deep truths to him. A prophet should have a fine wife.
As it is, he’ll enter the door, not having seen her for weeks. Maybe he’ll look at her and maybe he won’t. He’ll lay down his bag. He’ll throw down his bag. He’ll collapse, proclaim himself famished. She’ll serve him food. She’ll serve him drink. And again fill his plate and cup. And then, perhaps, tenderness will soften his gaunt face. He will look up from his clean plate and recount some complicated fate he deciphered from various patterns of shells.
Deep slumber will embrace the prophet before he finishes. Without him touching his wife. A wise man is relieved of the burden of his travels through sleep.
Yemaya wrings her bloody hands on a rag. She rubs her skin hard and savors the raw pain. She tries to understand. His age, she thinks. The weight of his wisdom, she thinks. Do wisdom and age choke desire?
Orunla is a powerful man, she thinks. Why it was this power, wasn't it, that lifted her out of the sweet waters of her youth. To see things more clearly. Power would fill her womb with the seeds for a harvest of fine children. Could that not have been prophesied from the truths of a handful of shells?
Orunla's ardor for Yemaya was palpable then in his long knotty fingers, that gripped her plump body and left marks. She would laugh heartily when she noticed the bruises he left on her then. But now he is a prophet to many, and a prophet should have a fine wife.
Is it his prestige as a prophet, she wonders, that is at odds with physical joy? Does he have other wives in the many villages he visits? She does not think that. That she would understand. But she sees his frail body. And he is not any longer a man of his body.
She remembers his body was raised in constriction, that it wandered no further than the shadow of a tree when he was a child. Yet, even when she married him, his body was delicate. Frailty in a man is beautiful, she thinks
Something else stokes Orunla's ardor. His diviner's art perpetuates his days and journeys. The shiny white cowries unravel history from his hand. Long has she spied upon him and the shells he throws for his many clients. Their open mouths remind her of the crevice of the womb - foretelling the birth of things to come. Long ago she began to memorize the patterns of open and closed mouths and the words that her husband would speak when those patterns fell into place. Perhaps they had something to say to her as well.
Later, Yemaya studies her sleeping husband. The corners of his mouth are encrusted white. In that moment, he does not appeal to her, and she feels a skip in the rhythm of her heartbeat. It scares her even for a moment to feel that way about him, but the feeling has been registered in her memory. And as she moves past the transitory fear she details in her mind the medicines he gathers and the prayers he sings to make the shells speak. If only they could tell her what was wrong, she would not have these scary feelings. She would know how to make his eyes glisten with tenderness when he looked upon her...
Orunla ©Eric K. Lerner
When he next prepares to leave, Yemaya makes sure to ask him to leave her extra cowries so that she can purchase yams and oil from the market. Orunla does not hesitate. He was mumbling to himself, reciting odu, practicing his inflection of each tone to inspire and evoke the power of each syllable. After all, he is the great diviner. Keeper of men's destines.
A man of humble appearance, he is the most comely actor, holding his audience spellbound, when he divines. It is no accident. He knows odu better than he does his own mind, and he embellishes them like a master sculptor details wood or bronze. And when he does his very blood pulsates through him with a vigor and feeling of intoxication he experiences no other time. It is as though he is a straight vector of energy between heaven and earth. The puny man he is becomes greatness itself. And he mumbles to himself, making sure each syllable strikes harmony with the cosmos.
Orunla leaves, and Yemaya acts.Yemaya readies herself to enter the altar room to consecrate the shells. A snake curls beneath the ribs. Even though he is long gone, he could appear any minute and attack her for her intransigence. But the inertia that has overwhelmed her begins to crack and ooze like an overripe fig. In a sickly sweet flow she enters the chamber.
At once, her breathing is faster and more free. She surveys the pots, bundles of desiccated herbs and plates of rotting food. A thin coat of dust has settled, and she wonders how, in a constant state of absence, Orunla freshens the source of his power. Her fear subsides as she recognizes her surroundings and her own pot – a simple leaden bowl. How come she hasn’t come here sooner. Does the pot not hold her very essence? She approaches it timidly and places a hand of shells inside without directly looking at it. Then, instinctively, she fetches a cup of salt water…as though she traveled to the ocean and back through the act of thought…and empties it in to the pot. She gathers a few handfuls of herbs from about the room, snatching each of them up without hesitation, and crumples them into the pot. A strange smell being at the same time the essence of spearmint, saltwater, and lilies overwhelms and massages her consciousness to an ethereal state. She is ready to begin…
Yemaya first reads shells for Okunrini, whose womb has been barren, whose heart has bled. For a moment longer she holds the shells cupped in her left hand. They form a singular prescence there, a tether on which to cling. She lets them go. They fragment through a tunnel in time she feels herself sucked into. Sixteen tiny cream colored calabashes scatter across the woven mat. She feels her heart stop short like she's crashed headfirst into a wall. But then she sees five orifices stare back in her face. She breathes in deeply, remembers what she has seen Orunla do myriad times. Yet now a switch turns on. Her breathing eases. The network of veins, skin and nerves at the nape of her neck become porous, gauzy film. Her vision is heightened, bathed in internal and external light.
"She who owes yet pays her debts is free," is what Yemaya reads for Okunrini. And this comes with good fortune. "Offer five white hens to the mouth of the river. For five days touch no food. When that is done, you will bleed and then bleed no more." So prophesies Yemaya that Okunrini would bare children. Further says she that the first born should serve the river where the sacrifice was left, and become a powerful healer.
After Okunrini offers sacrifice and goes hungry five days, she becomes fat with child and praises the Diviner Yemaya to all.
Next Yemaya reads shells for Kundumi-idé whose legs barely move, whose head throbs. "What you have left behind, you should not then look for again," is what Yemaya reads for Kundumi-idé. And this comes with bad fortune. For a moment, Yemaya is scared that she does not know what to say. The she looks upon the pattern of silent and crying mouths cast before her, and gathers them once more in her hand. And she knows what to ask and throws again. And soon all that could be told is, and Kundumi-idé is to sacrifice 21,000 cowries, and 7 ducks as he walks backward into the ocean, telling his woes to the memories of mothers….
This Kundumi-idé does, and when he does, his gate is unfettered, his head is clear, and he praises the Diviner Yemaya to all.
And so it goes. As Yemaya throws shells, the shells speak, she listens and speaks the truth. Those who come to her come away with powerful truths. And Yemaya is happy. The ennui that overwhelmed her is no more. Her house grows with wealth when Orunla is away. And the truth of the word reveals itself to her when Orunla is away! And again she is fat with joy, not the fat of children, but a fat full of herself. "Orunla has his life and his fortune," she knows, "and now I have mine."
When Orunla comes home, she cooks his meals, she mends his clothes. That is all that there is between them now, she knows. She does not long for him. Sometimes, feelings between two people dry like a wound and then are no more. Once this meant sadness and anger to Yemaya. The anger enabled her to take the secret of reading shells from her husband and make it her own.
As for Orunla, he did not notice his wife, other than to know she was there. His meals were served, his clothes were mended. It felt good to rest his feet after travelling such long distances. What he did recognize was that nobody came to him for readings. "Most curious," he thought. Afterall, he was the great diviner, the keeper of men’s destinies. People far and wide sung his praises and sought his expertise. Why should they not do so in his own home. The mystery disturbed him, but not so much that he would not place his aching feet on the chair before him and close his eyes while a cool breeze from the sea passed through the window across his sweating brow.
Life passes like that for some time. But the truth of Yemaya’s deception is one day revealed, and happens like this.
One day, Orunla returns some weeks early from one of his journeys. The shells have told him a leopard awaits him in his path. The prophet takes heed of his future, so he thinks, and quickly journeys home. There outside his door, his clients stand in line. "What is this line for?" Orunla asks.
"We are here to have the Diviner Yemaya read our fortunes," a man answers.
"How could this be," Orunla thinks. "That is why nobody comes here to me for readings," he realizes. The bitch! He reaches into his sack for a cutlass he uses to cut plants for medicine. "I will have her head for this!"
Yemaya casts twelve open mouths for Onitoyo, but before she could hear them speak, Orunla bursts through the entrance swaggering his cutlass through the air. Yemaya does not think. She does not protest. She bolts for fear of her life. Being much younger than her husband, she is more fleet afoot than he, and that is what saves her now from death.
But she must find shelter. She travels far to the home of Obatala. Surely the compassionate Lord of the White Cloth will take mercy on her and offer her safe haven. But the old man says to her, "I am an old man. What protection would I be against your husband Orunla. They say he has become a titan in his anger and he brandishes his cutlass fiercely to fall all in his way. You must go elsewhere…"
And all from whom she seeks shelter say nearly the same. "I a merely a beggar." "I am merely a farmer." "I am merely a seamstress."
So it goes that she even seeks Eshu.
When she enters his hut, he is naked and oiling the blade that protrudes from his scalp. "Oh mighty Eshu," Yemaya begs, "if there is one brave enough to stand up to the wrath of Orunla, surely it is you. Please save me from him. He has gone insane since I found out how to read cowries and seeks to kill me." Eshu continues to oil his blade, grinning and twisting his face into spasms. He does not respond, nor even seem to notice. He mutters to himself, "First my followers construct a penis growing out of my head, then they replace it with a blade!" Yemaya wrings her hands, then flees.
She runs, feeling her heart explode with every step. She no longer sees what’s in front of her. She can sense the hurried step of Orunla not far behind. Already, he’s asked Obatala. Already, he’s asked Babalu…..He grows closer. The burden of a miserable marriage becomes the omen of death.
Cold water splashes her legs. She can run no further, having come to land’s end. She looks around. The beach is empty, but for a group of young men frolicking in the tides. They are naked, their skins in various hues of cinnamon and coffee glisten in marriage of sea and sun. They laugh and caress one another, seemingly oblivious to the broad panting woman whose intruded on their delightful afternoon. Yemaya is bent over catching her breath, when all of the sudden one of the young men speaks. "You must be Yemaya – the Diviner. We heard all about you and that husband of yours. What a prick! Come over by us. We’ll protect you from him, girlfriend." Nearly broken with sobs catching in her throat, Yemaya enters the waves and moves over to her unlikely heroes. They draw a circle around her splashing her with the refreshing salt water.
She begins to drift level with the water when Orunla arrives at the beach. The young men have stepped in front of her. A tall slender one walks over toward Orunla, with one hand nonchalantly pulling his penis. "Hey big man, I hear you’re looking for your wife." Orunla looks at the young man incredulously, his stomach quivering with revulsion at the sight. "Why don’t you give me a kiss, and I’ll tell you where you can find her." Orunla is mortified. Visions of the ridicule he suffered as a frail young men rush through his mind. "I’m not one of them," he affirms to himself. As the young man approaches closer extending a hand, Orunla senses a dread pact about to be formed. And him – Orunla – a man of legendary intelligence and strength – must flee, lest there be even a whisper.
With Orunla disappearing, Yemaya relaxes. She closes her eyes as she lays back across the waves. At last she feels at home. Her body undulates with the rhythm of the waves. As the rhythms of her body and the rhythms of the waves become as one, she senses that her human body is no more. And this is as it was for her in the beginning. Now relieved and expanding boundlessly. She segues around the young men’s thighs as they dance about and rises in glittering droplets across their hands and bodies as they splash one another in joy.
Yemaya ©Eric K. Lerner
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Divination/Occult |
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