At the Time of the Dream

Abstract

At the Time of the Dream Jourdan Imani Keith (bio) When we still slept together, in the time of the dream, when the whales rose outside our bedroom window, looked in through the white frame where I had known the garden to be, I thought, when did we move to a houseboat, when did we become adrift? At the time of the dream, when she slept her unbroken sleep, she was bringing ocean into our room. She woke breaching, with the sound of her breath, a quiet, puh shh, her exhale. It never woke her—only me. At the time of the dream, I did not know a gray whale, just off Arroyo Beach, was throwing its dying into the eye-light of a West Seattle view, ending all the distance between us, the sea, the factory-lined shores of the Duwamish River, the cranes that rise from the fog like teeth through a reversed sky, long-legged monsters walking their consumer walk, their red steel-knees bent above the waters of Puget Sound. At the time of the dream, I did not know that the whale, telling its gray story of sneakers and plastic bags in its belly and last breaths was my whale. It was the whale in my dream, or at least that is what we believed, weeks later when my now ex-spouse called from her work. "Jourdan. The whale that you were dreaming of, when you were dreaming of the whale, … a gray whale was dying on Alki. A whale died on Alki." It was not Alki Beach, but to us, it felt like the place we were most familiar with. The place where I proposed to her at a Cuban-owned, lesbian-owned restaurant some seven years before. The place where the scent of cigar smoke was a phantom comfort of Cuba. She walked toward me as though I was home. Seven years later, her co-worker showed her the story of the beached gray whale that died along the West Seattle shore. We did not have tv. We did not use smartphones. That was the first we'd heard about it. The blogs reported the tales around its dead body, rumors and questions like flies hovered above the carcass. Was it the one that had been spotted earlier in [End Page 55] the week, a hundred feet from houses, fifty feet from cars and pedestrians, little distance between the sand and children unable to stop the dying? She called. The whale. My spouse. She said my name, with a pause in her disbelief. The whale had come to me, looking into our home through our bedroom window. These are the things we did not know. We did not know the sound of coming up for air was for them, was for us. Didn't know their breath was voluntary, didn't know that it doesn't just happen, didn't know that every time they breathe, they choose it. Didn't know that we too had to come up for breath. We did not know that we were drowning on dry land. After the dream, I woke, haunted by urgency. I was always anxious by spring but why, why, why had whales come to my window—looked me in my eyes? I fretted that it was about the seventeen-day wilderness trip that I would be leading. By 2010 I was an expert, but was that a warning to keep "my babies" safe? I called the kids on the trips my babies, although they were all in high school. I was responsible for their lives. Somebody's children, they are somebody's babies. Risk management had always been my strength, my focus, my highest concern, but that summer as the dream resurfaced while I planned, it felt like a premonition I could not understand. I became more exacting, more detailed, more focused, more obsessed. Stressed. More stressed. How was I to know the warning was also direction, was also peril? I live in a world that I have come to understand from that dream. I had no language for it. No more than I understood the dream or the song of the whales...