Free Banana Rose by Natalie Goldberg

first left. I got out near the canyon rim and began to walk the ridge line. Down below I could see the town of Valdez. I had the feeling that with the right wind my feet would leave the ground, that I would float in currents with the ravens, who drifted above the small adobe houses huddled below in fields. I wanted to fly. I visualized magpies and hawks, but I couldn’t feel the essential motion of a bird. My heart wanted to soar, but I couldn’t lift my body. How do I feel as free as I did that one day out behind the Luhan house? I couldn’t go back to the cottonwood. It had already given me its gift. I told Gauguin to fuck off when he said I wasn’t disciplined about painting. I told him it was none of his business, it wasn’t my style to practice scales like he did. But what was my style?
    I was concentrating on how to fly. The sky was an intense blue—deeper than blue—it was heaven and it was calling me. My legs were hanging out my red shorts, and in my mind they were lifting.
    Just then I saw someone walking in the opposite direction on the ridge. We came upon each other face to face. She was the tallest human being I had ever met. I arched my head, like a finch to a stork, and the first words I said to her were, “How tall are you?”
    “I am six foot one in my bare feet.” She stared back at me hard. She had deep gray eyes, short blond hair that seemed to be chopped instead of cut, and an almost perfectly heart-shaped face. Her eyebrows were so light, they seemed not to be there at all, and I noticed she held one shoulder higher than the other. On that Thursday she was wearing a red, black, and white plaid button-down, short-sleeve shirt and blue jeans. She was barefoot. The next thing she said to me was, “You’re not big enough to be a raven. Maybe a sparrow.” Then she walked around me and kept going along the ridge.
    First my head twisted and then my whole body, so I could follow her with my eyes. She had a book stuffed in her back pocket. I squinted. I could see The Ballad of the Sad.. .
    “Hey—” I ran after her. “Are you reading Carson McCullers?” She turned, pulled the book out of her pocket, and flashed me the cover. “I read it in tenth grade. I loved it,” I said.
    “I’ve read it about eight times. Have you read it since tenth grade?” she asked.
    “No.” I looked down. “Do you live around here?” I asked, changing the subject.
    She nodded and pointed to a small adobe on the other side of the road.
    “How did you know I was pretending to be a bird?” I asked.
    “Because I do that, and I could tell.”
    “I’m Nell.” I held out my hand.
    “I’m Anna.” She had big hands, too.
    “Do you live alone?”
    “Yes.” She paused. “Do you want to come in for tea?”
    “Sure, I’m a little tired from flying right now, anyway.” I was trying to be charming, but it came out sounding corny.
    We walked through a wooden gate and down a narrow dirt path. The back door was open, and the screen slammed behind me. There was only one big room with a blue sofa bed—a white sheet hung out below the cushion—in the corner, a hot plate on the red kitchen table in front of the window that faced the ridge. The desk was actually a door on some cinder blocks. There were books everywhere. Anna cleared three from the kitchen table when she brought over the green teapot.
    “Flannery O’Connor, Tennessee Williams.” I read the book spines. “You like Southern authors?”
    “Yes. They have so much of America in them,” she answered.
    “I loved Gone with the Wind. ” I could see this didn’t impress her. She pursed her lips. I wanted to impress her. There was a wine-red overstuffed chair with carved feet by the wood stove. “Where do you come from?” I asked, changing the subject again.
    “I was brought up in Nebraska, but I went to school in Colorado.” She poured mint tea into two purple cups, using a strainer to catch the leaves. She had long fingers.
    “Hey, did you ever