DUSK AMONG THE GIANTS
I am refusing to call it Easter Island and will continue to refuse to call it anything but its true name because I am Jewish and Easter has nothing to do with me, not that that matters here because it does not. If the local boys (I should say native boys and I really should say boys and men) want anything to do with me they know the moai (which is such a tiny word for such huge, stone heads) must approve. Take me to Rano Raraku at dusk and have your way with me and if only one moai topples then I am not yours. I am somewhat pleased to say the native males always take up the challenge and therefore I am never alone and rarely bored.
Mother will never be done with her work. The grant money ebbs and flows but never disappears entirely. In one of her sacred moments of attention she will tell me she should send me back to Emporia. But Emporia (such an elegant name for an inelegant city) will not have me, and I will not have Emporia. Where we are now is where I am to be. Mother tells me I am seventeen going on forty. I tell her I am forty going on seventeen. The schools in Emporia will no longer have me and that is to be expected in light of all that I did and would probably have continued to do. Mother is unaware of my own archeological pursuits in the quarries of Rano Raraku. Even if she did I doubt she would arrange for one of the statues to topple and scare away the men and leave me to nobody.
I faced enough ancestors in Emporia, all unseen, all under the ground. Here, the ancestors are dotting the land, some preserved, some buried to their shoulders, each one bigger than the last. Silent, bemused. Uninterested in where I have been or all I have disobeyed.
Mother finds only one thing interesting and that is why she has been here so long and will continue to be here even if there is someday no money.
I find everything interesting.
Tonight this one boy will accept my challenge with a smile on his face. For all he knows, the moai in front of which he will “pay attention” to me is one of his ancestors. The boy does not know that while he is with me I will be warning him that at any moment his ancestor could fall and crush us both. I can make anything seem real. No, not seem. Be.
The day is for tourists and the night is for natives. The dusk is for me, who is eight hundred years old going on seventeen, who is on her back or astride her latest challenger, who feels the ancient breath from the towering nostrils. Waiting. Waiting for one to topple, because one will.