Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart by Alice Walker Read Free Book Online

no stirring within. Though perhaps her mother’s visit had been one. It had been a very long time since she’d dreamed of her. After the crash, after identifying the bodies, she’d feared nightmares, but she’d been spared those. Her poor father’s body had been crushed like an accordion. She shuddered now to remember it. And yet, she felt she must remember it, linger over her response to it, there under the open protection of the sky, in the middle of charging waters, vulnerable to being dashed against rocks herself. She had longed to touch some whole part of him. And found that whole part in one of his feet. She’d grasped his toes, so long and hairy on their tops, and she’d caressed them until she felt satisfied. They never warmed from her hands, not the slightest bit. That was what being dead meant, she thought.
    Now she realized that she was weeping, just a little, and that a pain in her shoulder, carried so long she’d gotten used to it, seemed to be shifting closer to the surface of her skin. She began to rotate her shoulders. Avoa, sitting next to her, began to rotate hers as well. Before long they were doing miniaturized yoga postures in the tiny boat.
    Ahead of them the other women’s boat was entering unusually powerful rapids. As they watched, startled, it overturned. They had barely time to think before they were running the same rapids. She wondered if they too would be flung into the river. But no, their oarswoman steered them slightly more to the left of a huge boulder that rose up like an iceberg in the middle of the river. They sped past the others, all swimming madly toward the shore.
    That night, as they sat around the campfire, she was flooded with gratitude. To see the women safe, to hear their humorous stories of their surprise, their fright. To know they had depended on their own strength and courage to pull themselves to shore.
    That night, in the adrenaline glow of having survived, the talk was, of course, about sex.
    How much and how often, right? said Margery, drying her hair with a towel and throwing a fistful of dried twigs on the fire.
    How long and how much does size matter, anyway? said Cheryl, biting into a chocolate bar she’d stashed for just such an occasion.
    The women laughed.
    “Gimme something that’s not hard,/Come on, come on.”
    Sue sang the refrain from John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Give Me Something,” from their Double Fantasy album. She loved Ono for recording what sounded like a live orgasm.
    There’s a period in there where you really don’t want anything hard, said Kate.
    Not me, said Cheryl. I fantasize big, hard, and long.
    And black? asked Kate.
    Cheryl colored. Sometimes, yes, she said. I’ll never forget the day I ambled into Good Vibrations and there it was, hanging on the wall.
    The women roared.
    There’s fantasy and then there’s, ah, actual flesh, said Annie, an oarswoman their own age, who had come over to join them. Firm is one thing; hard is something else, she said. She was a wiry Texan with a hawk’s nose and piercing gray eyes. Her wild white-streaked hair fanned out around her faded red baseball cap. The young can handle hard, she said; at our age firm is very acceptable. She lay back and looked thoughtfully into the fire. I once had a lover who preferred the term full. He thought being hard inside me would be painful, and it was.
    Nature takes care of it very well, said Margery. If only someone would tell men it’s okay. Not to be hard as a rock, not to need to drive a woman through the bed.
    Sally, wandering over from the other campfire, overheard this comment.
    Well, she said, laughing with the women, I can see where the inquiring mind needs to be.
    Oh, yes, said Cheryl, come sit with the big girls. We’ll tell you what time of night it is.
    I can’t believe you’re all straight, said Sue.
    There was a long pause.
    I’ve been straight for incredibly long periods, said Margery. Thoughtfully.
    The women hooted.
    The moon overhead