Version 2007.03.05

## “Being in Dreaming: An Initiation into the Sorcerers' World” - ©1991 by Florinda Donner

### Chapter 1

On an impulse after attending the baptism of a friend's child in the city of Nogales, Arizona, I decided to cross the border into Mexico.

As I was leaving my friend's house, one of her guests, a woman named Delia Flores, asked me for a ride to Hermosillo.

She was a dark-complexioned woman, perhaps in her mid-forties, of medium height and stout build.

She was powerfully big, with straight black hair arranged into a thick braid.

Her dark, shiny eyes highlighted a shrewd, yet slightly girlish, round face.

Certain that she was a Mexican born in Arizona, I asked her if she needed a tourist card to enter Mexico.

"Why should I need a tourist card to enter my own country?" she retorted, widening her eyes with exaggerated surprise.

"Your mannerism and speech inflection made me think you were from Arizona," I said.

"My parents were Indians from Oaxaca," she explained, "but I am a ladina."

"What's a ladina?"

"Ladinos are sharp Indians who grow up in the city," she elucidated. There was an odd excitement in her voice.

I was at a loss to understand as she added, "They take up the ways of the white man, and they are so good at it that they can fake their way into anything."

"That's nothing to be proud of," I said judgingly. "It's certainly not too complimentary to you, Mrs. Flores."

The contrite expression on her face gave way to a wide grin:

"Perhaps not to a real Indian or to a real white man," she said cheekily, "but I am perfectly satisfied with it myself."

She leaned toward me, and added, "Do call me Delia. I've the feeling we're going to be great friends."

Not knowing what to say, I concentrated on the road.

We drove in silence to the check point.

The guard asked for my tourist card, but didn't ask for Delia's. He didn't seem to notice her- no words or glances were exchanged between them.

When I tried to talk to Delia, she forcefully stopped me with an imperious movement of her hand.

Then the guard looked at me questioningly. Since I didn't say anything, he shrugged his shoulders and waved me on.

"How come the guard didn't ask for your papers?" I asked when we were some distance away.

"Oh, he knows me," she lied, and knowing that I knew she was lying, she burst into a shameless laughter.

"I think I frightened him, and he didn't dare to talk to me," she lied again.

And again she laughed.

I decided to change the subject, if only to save her from escalating her lies.

I began to talk about topics of current interest in the news; but mostly we drove in silence.

It was not an uncomfortable or strained silence. It was like the desert around us; wide and stark, and oddly reassuring.

"Where shall I drop you?" I asked as we drove into Hermosillo.

"Downtown," she said. "I always stay in the same hotel when I'm in the city.

"I know the owners well, and I'm sure I can arrange for you to get the same rate I get."

I gratefully accepted her offer.

The hotel was old and run down.

The room I was given opened to a dusty courtyard.

A double, four-poster bed and a massive, old-fashioned dresser shrunk the room to claustrophobic dimensions.

A small bathroom had been added, but a chamber pot was still under the bed: It matched the porcelain washing set on the dresser.

The first night was awful.

I slept fitfully, and in my dreams I was conscious of whispers and shadows moving across the walls.

Shapes of things, and monstrous animals rose from behind the furniture.

People materialized from the corners; pale, ghostlike.

The next day I drove around the city and its surroundings; and that night, although I was exhausted, I stayed awake.

When I finally fell asleep into a hideous nightmare, I saw a dark, amoeba-shaped creature stalking me at the foot of the bed.

Iridescent tentacles hung from its cavernous crevices.

As the creature leaned over me, it breathed, making short, raspy sounds that died out into a wheeze.

My screams were smothered by its iridescent ropes tightening around my neck.

Then all went black as the creature- which somehow I knew to be female- crushed me by lying on top of me.

That timeless moment between sleep and wakefulness was finally broken by the insistent banging on my door, and the concerned voices of the hotel guests out in the hall.

I turned on the light, and mumbled some apologies and explanations through the door.

With the nightmare still sticking to my skin like sweat, I went into the bathroom.

I stifled a scream as I looked into the mirror: The red lines across my throat and the evenly spaced red dots running down my chest looked like an unfinished tattoo.

Frantically, I packed my bags. It was three o'clock in the morning when I walked out into the deserted lobby to pay my bill.

"Where are you going at this hour?" Delia Flores asked, emerging from the door behind the desk:

"I heard about your nightmare. You had the whole hotel worried."

I was so glad to see her I put my arms around her, and began to sob.

"There, there," she murmured soothingly, stroking my hair:

"If you want to, you can come and sleep in my room. I'll watch over you."

"Nothing in this world will make me stay in this hotel," I said. "I'm returning to Los Angeles this very instant."

"Do you often have nightmares?" she casually asked, leading me toward the creaky old couch in the corner.

"Off and on," I said. "I've suffered from nightmares all my life. I've gotten sort of used to them.

"But tonight it was different: It was the most real, the worst nightmare I've ever had."

She gave me an appraising, long look and then slowly dragging her words said, "Would you like to get rid of your nightmares?"

As she spoke, she gave a half glance over her shoulder toward the door, as if afraid that someone might be listening there. "I know someone who could truly help you."

"I would like that very much," I whispered, untying the scarf around my neck to show her the red marks.

I told her the explicit details of my nightmare.

I asked, "Have you ever seen anything like this?"

"Looks pretty serious," she pronounced, carefully examining the lines across my throat. "You really shouldn't leave before seeing the healer I have in mind.

"She lives about a hundred miles south of here; about a two-hour ride."

The possibility of seeing a healer was most welcome to me: I had been exposed to them since birth in Venezuela.

Whenever I was sick, my parents called a doctor, and as soon as he left, our Venezuelan housekeeper would bundle me up and take me to a healer.

As I grew older and no longer wanted to be treated by a witchdoctor- none of my friends were- she convinced me that it couldn't possibly do any harm to be twice protected.

The habit was so ingrained in me that, when I moved to Los Angeles, I made sure to see a doctor as well as a healer whenever I was ill.

"Do you think she will see me today?" I asked.

Seeing her uncomprehending expression, I reminded her that it was already Sunday.

"She'll see you any day," Delia assured me. "Why don't you just wait for me here, and I'll take you to her. It won't take me but a minute to get my belongings together."

"Why would you go out of your way to help me?" I asked, suddenly disconcerted by her offer. "After all, I'm a perfect stranger to you."

"Precisely!" she exclaimed, rising from the couch.

She gazed down at me indulgently, as though she could sense the nagging doubts rising within me.

"What better reason could there be?" she asked rhetorically.

"To help a perfect stranger is an act of folly or one of great control.

"Mine is one of great control."

At a loss for words, all I could do was to stare into her eyes, which seemed to accept the world with wonder and curiosity.

There was something strangely reassuring about her.

It was not only that I trusted her, but I felt as if I had known her all my life: I sensed a link between us; a closeness.

And yet, as I watched her disappear behind the door to get her belongings, I considered grabbing my bags and bolting for the car.

I didn't want to end up in a predicament by being daring as I had so many times before.

But some inexplicable curiosity held me back despite the familiar nagging feeling of alarm.

I had waited for nearly twenty minutes when a woman, wearing a red pantsuit and platform shoes, stepped out of the door behind the clerk's desk.

She paused underneath the light.

With a studied gesture, she threw her head back so that the curls of her blond wig shimmered in the light.

"You didn't recognize me, did you?" she laughed gleefully.

"It's really you, Delia," I exclaimed, staring at her, open-mouthed.

"What do you think?" Still cackling, she stepped out with me onto the sidewalk toward my car parked in front of the hotel.

She flung her basket and duffel bag in the back seat of my small convertible, then sat beside me.

Delia said, "The healer I'm taking you to see says that only the young and the very old can afford to look outrageous."

Before I had a chance to remind her that she was neither, she confided that she was much older than she appeared to be.

Her face was radiant as she turned toward me and exclaimed, "I wear this outfit because I like to dazzle my friends!"

Whether she meant me or the healer, she didn't say: I certainly was dazzled.

It wasn't only her clothes that were different: Her whole demeanor had changed.

There wasn't a trace of the aloof, circumspect woman who had traveled with me from Nogales to Hermosillo.

"This will be a most enchanting trip," she pronounced, "especially if we put the top down."

Her voice was happy and dreamy. "I adore traveling at night with the top down."

I readily obliged her.

It was almost four o'clock in the morning by the time we left Hermosillo behind.

The sky, soft and black and speckled with stars, seemed higher than any other sky I had ever seen.

I drove fast, yet it seemed we were not moving.

The gnarled silhouettes of cactus and mesquite trees appeared and disappeared endlessly under the headlights: They seemed to be all the same shape; all the same size.

"I packed us some sweet rolls and a full thermos of champurrado," Delia said, reaching for her basket in the back seat. "It'll be morning before we get to the healer's house."

She poured me half a cup of the thick hot chocolate made with cornmeal, and fed me, bite by bite, a sort of Danish roll.

"We're driving through a magical land," she said as she sipped the delicious chocolate. "A magical land populated by warring people."

"What warring people are they?" I asked, trying not to sound patronizing.

"The Yaqui people of Sonora," she said and kept quiet, perhaps measuring my reaction.

"I admire the Yaqui Indians because they have been in constant war," she continued:

"The Spaniards first; and then the Mexicans- as recently as 1934- have felt the savagery, cunning, and relentlessness of the Yaqui warriors."

"I don't admire war or warlike people," I said.

Then, by way of apologizing for my belligerent tone, I explained that I came from a German family that had been torn apart by the war.

"Your case is different," she maintained. "You don't have the ideals of freedom."

"Wait a minute!" I protested. "It is precisely because I espouse the ideals of freedom that I find war so abhorrent."

"We are talking about two different kinds of war," she insisted.

"War is war," I interjected.

"Your kind of war," she went on, ignoring my interruption, "is between two brothers who are both rulers and are fighting for supremacy."

She leaned toward me, and in an urgent whisper added, "The kind of war I'm talking about is between a slave and the master who thinks that he owns people. Do you see the difference?"

"No. I don't," I insisted stubbornly, and repeated that war is war no matter what the reason.

"I can't agree with you," she said, and sighing loudly leaned back in her seat:

"Perhaps the reason for our philosophical disagreement," she continued, "is that we come from different social realities."

Astonished by her choice of words, I automatically slowed the car.

I didn't mean to be rude, but to hear her spout academic concepts was so incongruous and unexpected that I couldn't help but laugh.

Delia didn't take offense: She watched me, smiling, thoroughly pleased with herself, and said, "When you get to know my point of view, you may change your mind."

She said this so seriously and yet so kindly that I felt ashamed of myself for laughing at her.

"You may even apologize for laughing at me," she added as if she had read my thoughts.

"I do apologize, Delia," I said and truly meant it. "I'm terribly sorry for my rudeness.

"I was so surprised by your statements that I didn't know what to do." I glanced at her briefly, and added contritely, "So I laughed."

"I don't mean social apologies for your conduct," she said, shaking her head in disappointment. "I mean apologies for not understanding the plight of man."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said uneasily. I could feel her eyes boring through me.

"As a woman, you should understand that plight very well," she said. "You have been a slave all your life."

"What are you talking about, Delia?" I asked, irritated by her impertinence.

Then I immediately calmed down, certain that the poor Indian had no doubt an insufferable, overwhelming husband.

"Believe me, Delia, I'm quite free. I do as I please."

"You might do as you please, but you're not free," she persisted:

"You are a woman, and that automatically means that you're at the mercy of men."

"I'm not at the mercy of anybody!" I yelled.

I couldn't tell whether it was my assertion or my tone of voice that made Delia burst into loud guffaws. She laughed at me as hard as I had laughed at her before.

"You seem to be enjoying your revenge," I said, peeved. "It's your turn to laugh now, isn't it?"

Suddenly serious, she said, "It's not the same at all.

"You laughed at me because you felt superior.

"A slave that talks like a master always delights the master for a moment."

I tried to interrupt her and tell her that it hadn't even crossed my mind to think of her as a slave, or of me as a master, but she ignored my efforts.

In the same solemn tone she said that the reason she had laughed at me was because I had been rendered stupid and blind to my own womanhood.

"What's with you, Delia?" I asked, puzzled. "You're deliberately insulting me."

"Certainly," she readily agreed and giggled, completely indifferent to my rising anger.

She slapped my knee with a resounding whack.

"What concerns me," she went on, "is that you don't even know that by the mere fact that you're a woman you're a slave."

Mustering up all the patience I was capable of, I told Delia that she was wrong: "No one is a slave nowadays."

"Women are slaves," Delia insisted. "Men enslave women.

"Men befog women.

"Men's desire to brand women as their property befogs us," she declared:

"That fog hangs around our necks like a yoke."

My blank look made her smile.

She lay back on the seat, clasping her hands on her chest.

"Sex befogs women," she added softly, yet emphatically:

"Women are so throughly befogged that they can't consider the possibility that their low status in life is the direct end result of what is done to them sexually."

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," I pronounced.

Then, rather ponderously, I went into a long diatribe about the social, economic, and political reasons for women's low status.

At great length I talked about the changes that have taken place in the last decades; how women have been quite successful in their fight against male supremacy.

Peeved by her mocking expression, I couldn't refrain from remarking that she was no doubt prejudiced by her own experiences; by her own perspective in time.

Delia's whole body shook with suppressed mirth.

She made an effort to contain herself and said, "Nothing has really changed.

"Women are slaves. We've been reared to be slaves.

"The slaves who are educated are now busy addressing the social and political abuses committed against women.

"None of the slaves, though, can focus on the root of their slavery- the sexual act- unless it involves rape or is related to some other form of physical abuse."

A little smile parted her lips as she said that religious men, philosophers, and men of science have for centuries maintained, and of course still do, that men and women must follow a biological, God-given imperative having to do directly with their sexual reproductive capabilities.

"We have been conditioned to believe that sex is good for us," she stressed:

"This inherent belief and acceptance has incapacitated us to ask the right question."

"And what question is that?" I asked, trying hard not to laugh at her utterly erroneous convictions.

Delia didn't seem to have heard me: She was silent for so long I thought she had dozed off.

I was startled when she said, "The question that no one dares ask is, what does it do to us women to get laid?"

"Really, Delia," I chided in mock consternation.

"Women's befogging is so total, we will focus on every other issue of our inferiority except the one that is the cause of it all," she maintained.

"But, Delia, we can't do without sex," I laughed. "What would happen to the human race if we don't..."

She checked my question and my laughter with an imperative gesture of her hand.

"Nowadays, women like yourself, in their zeal for equality, imitate men," she said:

"Women imitate men to such an absurd degree that the sex they are interested in has nothing to do with reproduction.

"They equate freedom with sex, without ever considering what sex does to their physical and emotional well-being.

We have been so thoroughly indoctrinated, we firmly believe that sex is good for us."

She nudged me with her elbow, and then, as if she were reciting a chant, she added in a sing-song tone, "Sex is good for us. It's pleasurable. It's necessary.

"It alleviates depression, repression, and frustration.

"It cures headaches, low and high blood pressure. It makes pimples disappear.

"It makes your tits and ass grow. It regulates your menstrual cycle.

"In short, it's fantastic! It's good for women.

"Everyone says so. Everyone recommends it."

She paused for an instant, and then pronounced with dramatic finality, "A fuck a day keeps the doctor away."

I found her statements terribly funny, but then I sobered abruptly as I remembered how my family and friends, including our family doctor, had suggested- not so crudely to be sure- sex as a cure for all the adolescent ailments I had had growing up in a strictly repressive environment.

The doctor had said that once I was married, I would have regular menstrual cycles. I would gain weight. I would sleep better. I would be sweet tempered.

"I don't see anything wrong with wanting sex and love," I said defensively:

"Whatever I've experienced of it, I have liked very much.

"And no one befogs me. I'm free! I choose whom I want and when I want it."

There was a spark of glee in Delia's dark eyes when she said, "Choosing your partner does in no way alter the fact that you're being fucked."

Then with a smile, as if to mitigate the harshness of her tone, she added, "To equate freedom with sex is the ultimate irony:

"Men's befogging is so complete, so total, it has zapped us of the needed energy and imagination to focus on the real cause of our enslavement."

She stressed, "To want a man sexually or to fall in love with one romantically are the only two choices given to the slaves.

"And all the things we have been told about these two choices are nothing but excuses that pull us into complicity and ignorance."

I was indignant with her. I couldn't help but think that she was some kind of repressed, man-hating shrew.

"Why do you dislike men so much, Delia?" I asked in my most cynical tone.

"I don't dislike them," she assured me:

"What I passionately object to is our reluctance to examine how thoroughly indoctrinated we are.

"The pressure put upon us is so fierce and self-righteous that we have become willing accomplices.

"Whoever dares to differ is dismissed and mocked as a man-hater or as a freak."

Blushing, I glanced at her surreptitiously. I decided that she could talk so disparagingly about sex and love because she was, after all, old: Physical desires were all behind her.

Chuckling softly, Delia put her hands behind her head:

"My physical desires are not behind me because I'm old," she confided, "but because I've been given a chance to use my energy and imagination to become something different than the slave I was raised to be."

I felt thoroughly insulted rather than surprised that she had read my thoughts.

I began to defend myself, but my words only triggered more laughter.

As soon as she stopped, she turned toward me.

Her face was as stern and serious as that of a teacher about to scold a pupil.

"If you are not a slave, how come they reared you to be a Hansfrau?" she asked. "And how come all you think about is to heiraten, and about your future Herr Gemahl who will Dich mitnehmen?"

I laughed so hard at her use of German I had to stop the car lest we have an accident.

More interested in finding out where she had learned German so well, I forgot to defend myself from her unflattering remarks that all I wanted in life was to find a husband who would whisk me away.

Regardless of how hard I pleaded, however, she disdainfully ignored my interest in her German.

"You and I will have plenty of time to talk about my German later," she assured me.

She regarded me mockingly and added, "Or about your being a slave."

Before I had a chance to retort, she suggested that we talk about something impersonal.

"Like what?" I asked, starting the car again.

Adjusting the seat in an almost reclining position, Delia closed her eyes.

"Let me tell you something about the four most famous leaders of the Yaquis," she said softly:

"I'm interested in leaders; in their successes or their failures."

Before I had a chance to grumble that I really wasn't that interested in war stories, Delia said that Calixto Muni was the first Yaqui leader who had attracted her attention.

She wasn't a gifted storyteller: Her account was straightforward, almost academic, yet I was hanging on her every word.

Calixto Muni had been an Indian who had sailed for years under the pirates' flag in the Caribbean.

On his return to his native Sonora, he led a military uprising against the Spaniards in the 1730s. Betrayed, he was captured and executed by the Spaniards.

Then Delia gave me a long and sophisticated elucidation of how during the 1820s, after the Mexican independence was achieved and the Mexican government attempted to parcel out the Yaqui lands, a resistance movement turned into a widespread uprising.

It was Juan Bandera, she said, who, guided by the spirit itself, organized military units among the Yaquis.

Often armed only with bows and arrows, Bandera's warriors fought the Mexican troops for nearly ten years. In 1832, Juan Bandera was defeated and executed.

Delia said that the next leader of renown was Jose Maria Leyva, better known as Cajeme- the one who doesn't drink.

He was a Yaqui from Hermosillo. He was educated, and had acquired vast military skills fighting in the Mexican army.

Thanks to those skills, he unified all the Yaqui towns. From his first uprising in the 1870s, Cajeme kept his army in an active state of revolt.

He was defeated by the Mexican army in 1887 in Buatachive; a fortified mountain stronghold. Although Cajeme managed to escape and hide in Guay-mas, he was eventually betrayed and executed.

The last of the great Yaqui heroes was Juan Maldonado, also known as Tetabiate- rolling stone.

He reorganized the remnants of the Yaqui forces in the Bacatete Mountains from which he waged ferocious and desperate guerrilla warfare against Mexican troops for more than ten years.

"By the turn of the century," Delia wrapped up her stories, "the dictator Porfirio Diaz had inaugurated a campaign of Yaqui extermination.

"Indians were shot down as they worked in the fields.

"Thousands were rounded up and shipped to Yucatan to work in the henequen plantations, and to Oaxaca to work in the sugar cane fields."

I was impressed by her knowledge, but I still couldn't figure out why she had told me all this.

I said admiringly, "You sound like a scholar; a historian in the Yaqui way of life. Who are you really?"

For an instant she seemed to be taken aback by my question, which was purely rhetorical, then she quickly recovered and said, "I've told you who I am.

"I just happen to know a great deal about the Yaquis. I live around them, you know."

She was silent for a moment, then nodded as if she had reached some conclusion and added, "The reason I've told you about the Yaqui leaders is because it is up to us women to know the strength and the weakness of the leader."

"Why?" I asked, puzzled. "Who cares about leaders? They are all nincompoops as far as I'm concerned."

Delia scratched her head under the wig, then sneezed repeatedly and said with a hesitant smile, "Unfortunately, women must rally around men, lest women want to lead themselves."

"Whom are they going to lead?" I asked sarcastically.

She looked at me, astonished, then rubbed her upper arm; the gesture, like her face, girlish.

"It's quite difficult to explain," she murmured. A peculiar softness had entered her voice; part tenderness, part indecision, part lack of interest:

"I'd better not. I might lose you completely.

"All I can say, for the time being, is that I'm neither a scholar nor a historian. I'm a storyteller, and I haven't told you the most important part of my tale yet."

"And what might that be?" I asked, intrigued by her desire to change the subject.

"All I've given you so far is factual information," she said. "What I haven't mentioned is the world of magic from which those Yaqui leaders operated.

"To them, the actions of wind and shadows, and of animals and plants were as important as the doings of men.

"That's the part that interests me the most."

"The actions of wind and shadows, and of animals and plants?" I repeated mockingly.

Unperturbed by my tone, Delia nodded.

She pushed herself up in the seat, pulled off the blond curly wig and let the wind blow through her straight black hair.

"Those are the Bacatete Mountains," she said, pointing to the mountains to the left of us, barely outlined against the semidarkness of the dawn sky.

"Is that where we are going?" I asked.

"Not this time," she said, sliding down into her seat again.

A cryptic smile played around her lips as she half turned toward me.

"Perhaps one day you'll have a chance to visit those mountains," she mused, closing her eyes.

"The Bacatetes are inhabited by creatures of another world; of another time."

"Creatures of another world, of another time?" I echoed her in mock seriousness. "Who or what are they?"

"Creatures," she said vaguely. "Creatures that don't belong to our time, to our world."

"Now, now, Delia. Are you trying to scare me?" I couldn't help laughing as I turned to glance at her.

Even in the dark, her face shone. She looked extraordinarily young, the skin molded without wrinkles over curving cheeks, chin, and nose.

"No. I'm not trying to scare you," she said matter-of-factly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm simply telling you what is common knowledge around here."

"Interesting. And what kind of creatures are they?" I inquired, biting my lip to suppress my giggles. "And have you seen them?"

"Of course I've seen them," she said indulgently. "I wouldn't be talking about them if I hadn't."

She smiled sweetly, without a trace of resentment. "They are beings that populated the earth at another time and now have retreated to isolated spots."

At first I couldn't help laughing out loud at her gullibility.

And then, seeing how serious and how convinced she was that these creatures indeed existed, I decided that rather than make fun of her I should accept her credulousness. [* credulousness- tendency to believe too readily and therefore to be easily deceived]

After all, she was taking me to a healer, and I didn't want to antagonize her with my rational probes.

"Are those creatures the ghosts of the Yaqui warriors who lost their lives in battle?" I asked.

She shook her head negatively, then, as if afraid someone might overhear, she leaned closer and whispered in my ear, "It's a well-known fact that those mountains are inhabited by enchanted creatures: birds that speak, bushes that sing, stones that dance.

"Creatures that can take any form at will."

She sat back and regarded me expectantly. "The Yaquis call these beings surem.

They believe that the surem are ancient Yaquis who refused to be baptized by the first Jesuits who came to Christianize the Indians."

She patted my arm affectionately. "Watch out. They say that the surem like blond women."

She cackled with delight. "Maybe that's what your nightmare was all about. A surem trying to steal you."

"You don't really believe what you're saying, do you?" I asked derisively, unable to keep my annoyance in check.

"No. I've just made up that the surem like blonds," she said soothingly. "They don't like blonds at all."

Although I didn't turn to glance at her, I could feel her smile and the humorous twinkle in her eyes.

It irked me to no end. I thought her to be either very candid, very coy, or, even worse, very mad.

"You don't believe that creatures from another world really exist, do you?" I snapped ill-humoredly.

Then, afraid I had offended her, I glanced at her with a word of half-anxious apology ready.

But before I could say anything, she answered in the same loud, ill-tempered tone of voice I had used.

"Of course I believe they exist. Why shouldn't they exist?"

"They just don't!" I snapped sharply and authoritatively, then quickly apologized.

I told her about my pragmatic upbringing and how my father had guided me to realize that the monsters in my dreams, and the playmates I had as a child- invisible to everyone, but me, of course- were nothing but the product of an overactive imagination.

"From an early age I was reared to be objective and to qualify everything," I stressed. "In my world, there are only facts."

"That's the problem with people," Delia remarked. "They are so reasonable that just hearing about it lowers my vitality."

"In my world," I continued, ignoring her comment, "there are no facts anywhere about creatures from another world, but only speculations and wishful thinking, and," I emphasized, "fantasies of disturbed minds."

"You can't be that dense!" she cried out delightedly in between fits of laughter, as if my explanation had surpassed all her expectations.

"Can it be proven that those creatures exist?" I challenged.

"What would the proof consist of?" she inquired with an air of obvious false diffidence. [* diffidence- lack of self-confidence]

"If someone else can see them, that would be a proof," I said.

"You mean that if, for instance, you can see them, that'll be proof of their existence?" she inquired, bringing her head close to mine.

"We can certainly begin there."

Sighing, Delia leaned her head against the backrest of her seat and closed her eyes.

She was silent for such a long time I was certain she had fallen asleep, and I was thus startled when she sat up abruptly and urged me to pull over to the side of the road. She had to relieve herself, she said.

To take advantage of our stop, I, too, went into the bushes.

As I was about to pull up my jeans, I heard a loud male voice say, "How delicious!" and sigh just behind me.

With my jeans still unzipped I dashed to where Delia was.

"We'd better get out of here fast!" I cried out. "There is a man hiding in the bushes."

"Nonsense," she brushed my words aside. "The only thing behind the bushes is a donkey."

"Donkeys don't sigh like lecherous men," I pointed out, then I repeated what I had heard the man say.

Delia collapsed into helpless laughter, then seeing how distressed I was, she held up her hand in a conciliatory gesture. "Did you actually see the man?"

"I didn't have to," I retorted. "It was enough to hear him."

She lingered for a moment longer, then headed toward the car.

Right before we climbed up the embankment to the road, she stopped abruptly and, turning toward me, whispered, "Something quite mysterious has happened. I must make you aware of it."

She led me by the hand back to the spot where I had squatted, and right there, behind the bushes, I saw a donkey.

"It wasn't there before," I insisted.

Delia regarded me with apparent pleasure, then shrugged her shoulders and turned to the animal.

"Little donkey," she cooed in a baby voice, "did you look at her butt?"

She's a ventriloquist, I thought: She's going to make the beast talk.

However, all the donkey did was to bray loudly and repeatedly.

"Let's get out of here," I pleaded, tugging at her sleeve. "It must have been the owner who's lurking in the bushes."

"But this little darling has no owner," she cooed in that same silly baby voice, and scratched the animal's soft, long ears.

"It certainly has an owner," I snapped. "Can't you see how well fed and groomed it is?"

In a voice that was getting hoarse with nervousness and impatience, I stressed again how dangerous it was for two women to be out alone on a deserted road in Sonora.

Delia regarded me silently, seemingly preoccupied.

Then she nodded as if in agreement and motioned me to follow her.

The donkey walked close behind me, nudging my buttocks repeatedly with its muzzle.

Mumbling an imprecation, I turned around, but the donkey was gone.

"Delia!" I cried out in sudden fright. "What happened to the donkey?"

Startled by my cry, a flock of birds rose in raucous flight.

The birds circled around us, then flew east toward that fragile crack in the sky that marked the end of the night and the start of the day.

"Where is the donkey?" I asked again in a barely audible whisper.

"Right here in front of you," she said softly, pointing to a gnarled, leafless tree.

"I can't see it."

"You need glasses."

"There is nothing wrong with my eyes," I said tartly. "I can even see the lovely flowers on the tree."

Astonished at the beauty of the glowing, snow-white morning glory-shaped blossoms, I moved closer. "What kind of a tree is it?"

"Palo Santo."

For one bewildering second I thought that the donkey, which was emerging from behind the satiny, silver-gray trunk, had spoken.

I turned to look at Delia.

"Palo Santo!" she laughed.

Then the thought crossed my mind that Delia was playing a joke on me. The donkey probably belonged to the healer, who, no doubt, lived nearby.

"What's so funny?" Delia asked, catching the all-knowing smirk on my face.

"I've got a most horrible cramp," I lied.

Holding my hands against my stomach I squatted, and said, "Please wait for me in the car."

The instant she turned to go, I took off my scarf and tied it around the donkey's neck. I enjoyed anticipating Delia's surprise upon discovering, once we were at the healer's place, that I had known about her joke all along.

However, any hope of seeing the donkey or my scarf again were soon dashed. It took us almost two more hours to reach the healer's house.