The Onion Girl Read Free Page B

they do, they ignore it, or explain it away.”
    â€œI’m not ungrateful to be here,” I tell him now. “No matter how I got across. But I can’t help wanting more. I want to know that I can keep doing it. I want to be here like you. For real.”
    â€œThis doesn’t feel real to you?” he asks.
    â€œYou know what I mean.”
    He nods. “I guess I do.” He puts out his cigarette on the heel of his boot and stows the butt away in his pocket. “We always want more than what we’ve got.”
    â€œI don’t mean to sound greedy,” I tell him. “But I don’t want two lives like Sophie does—one in the World As It is, and one here. I’d feel too schizophrenic. I don’t know how Sophie does it.”
    â€œOne’s real for her,” Joe says, “and one’s a dream. She puts each experience in what she figures is its appropriate compartment and it all comes out tidy.”
    That describes Sophie to a “T.” She’s as neat as I’m messy. I don’t know how she does that either. I can’t open a tube of paint without some of it immediately migrating to my fingers, my hair, my jeans …
    â€œTidy,” I repeat. “That’s sure not me.”
    Joe laughs. “You don’t have to work at convincing me about that.”
    I could just whack him sometimes.
    â€œI mean I can’t divide my life up neatly like that,” I say. “If I’m going to have access to the spiritworld, I want to be able to bring my sketchbook across with me and then bring it back again. I’d like to carry over a tent and food and things so that I could stay awhile and not have to worry about shelter or eating roots and berries.”
    The thing about traveling to the dreamlands the way Sophie does is that you can’t bring anything with you. You can’t bring anything back. Only the experience.
    â€œI hear you,” Joe says. “And we’ve been working on that with what I’ve been teaching you.”
    â€œI know. But finally being here, even just like this …”
    I see the understanding in his eyes. That understanding’s been there all along, but I had to explain how I feel all the same.
    â€œIt’s hard to be patient,” he says.

    I nod.
    â€œWe can work on it,” he says. “Being able to dream yourself over’s going to make everything go a lot quicker.”
    â€œWhen can we start?” I ask.
    He gives me an unhappy look.
    â€œFirst we have to deal with that accident,” he says.
    I start to shake my head. I don’t want to talk about it, whatever it is. But Joe’s not one to let you bury your head in the sand.
    â€œYou’ve got a hard road ahead of you,” he tells me. “Maybe your being able to cross over like this is compensation for all the work you’ve got waiting for you back in the World As It is. Or maybe that bang on the head knocked loose whatever it is that lets people cross over in a dream.”
    I am shaking my head now. Joe just ignores it. He fixes that steady gaze of his on me, the clown gone. He’s all serious.
    â€œI brought in a couple of different healers,” he says. “Even asked the crow girls to look in on you. They all say the same thing. You’ve got to do the mending on your own. See, the problem is, there’s an older hurt, sitting there on the inside of you, and it’s blocking anybody’s attempts to speed the natural healing process of what’s wrong on the outside.”
    â€œWhat are you saying?”
    I don’t admit to anything, but some part of me knows what he’s trying to tell me. Just thinking about it makes me feel the pull back to the world I’ve left behind. I don’t want to go back.
    Joe hesitates, then tells me, “It’s like a part of you doesn’t want to get any better.”
    â€œI’m not even sick.”
    â€œWell, you