One day in 2014, I met Dr. Jill Flanders Crosby. While I know how we met in a literal sense, I still can’t explain how we connected, how we went from a conversation on a cold but sunny spring day to working together in Cuba. All within a year. I’ve given up trying to explain the connection, because Dr. Flanders Crosby has since then introduced me to worlds far more difficult to explain.

And yet, that is exactly what I try to do as a member of the Secrets Under the Skin team. As a creative nonfiction writer, I’ve used literary strategies to make sense of the otherwise ineffable in my life. My grandmother, who was instrumental in my becoming a writer, often explained her life in Cuba through stories that Alejo Carpentier would call lo real maravilloso. For a child with an active imagination, the history of Cuba, as told by my grandmother, seemed too strange to be real. Her stories included families fleeing curses from Spain, enslaved people becoming presidents, spirits inciting revolution in secret, and deities changing names to protect their worshippers from persecution. Until I visited Cuba, my grandmother’s stories existed in my mind less as lo real maravilloso and more as magical realism.

Visiting Cuba, however, remained an impossibility for much of my life. As a second generation Cuban-American, I was raised by refugees who believed the only way to achieve an American identity was to completely abandon all other identities. There were no talks of the island in my household. Mentioning it was like swearing. I was forbidden to learn Spanish, and when I was caught talking to friends in Spanish, I risked punishment. We would only use English. We would talk of America as if we had been here all along. We would never mention a word of support for Castro, Guevara, Communism, or Cuba. Growing up, I felt ashamed of my fascination with the smooth flowing language of Spanish, with the fabled heroics of revolutionaries and the fantastic tales of transcultural spirits.

Despite spending my first two decades on Earth in Florida, a mere 400 miles from Cuba, my only access to the island was through reading and writing. I dedicated my MFA in Creative Writing to a novel about my grandmother’s migration. I read Caribbean literature; studied Santería, Arará, Yoruba and Lucumí; performed literary criticism on narratives of Caribbean diaspora, Cuban exodus, and fragmentary identities. None of it, however, compared to dancing at a ceremony, kneeling before an altar, or feeling the percussive beat of sacred drums during a ritual ceremony.

The most important thing Dr. Flanders Crosby has taught me is to create art that builds bridges. Through the use of literary language based in personal observation, the reader becomes entangled in the story. The reader experiences a transformative encounter as if they had the privilege of hearing the story directly from the storyteller—the Arará elder, the ceremonial drummer, the refugee grandmother.

The following blogs were originally published by 49 Writers. They will provide the framework for a book length project.

In order of publication, the blogs are:

1. “Performance Research”
2. “En Trance”
3. “Forbidden Worlds”
4. “Conviction”

• Performance Research    

  

  Jill found me. This is an important distinction to make, she
  often reminds me. She’d read my MFA thesis, a novel about my grandmother’s life
  in Cuba—a
  life filled with spirits and ambiguous religious convictions. When she found
  me, I was teaching developmental writing at University of Alaska-Anchorage, my
  third “home” in three years. I had taken to a peripatetic life of my own,
  wandering with the wind, as grounded as a ghost.

  Jill is the Chair of the Dance Program at University of
  Alaska-Anchorage. She had lived in Cuba
  and devoted the majority of her research to investigating the connection
  between the Arará in Cuba
  and the Ewe in Ghana.

  “You are exactly whom I’ve been looking for,” she said. We
  first met in her office. The snow outside her window, illuminated blue by the
  brief couple hours of winter daylight, filled her office with a dreamlike aura.
  Books spilled from her floor to ceiling shelves. Papers piled on the floor. I
  had to move a VCR from the chair in order to sit. She spoke like she’d known me
  for years, like she’d been looking precisely for me.

  “Want to go to Cuba?” she asked. I’d never been. I
  felt like a fraud writing about the island, claiming it as part of my identity,
  especially in her presence. I didn’t know whether she was genuinely asking me
  or mocking my spurious claims to the country.

  “You want magic realism?” she asked without waiting for my
  answer. “I’ll give you magic realism up the wazoo.” Her round glasses clung to
  the tip of her nose. Her hair had streaks the color of river ice. She scavenged
  her office for documents of her research: paintings completed by artists who’d
  traveled with her, grants awarded to her, photographs taken by a documentarian
  who’d recently accompanied her to Cuba. She tossed papers and books
  around, looking like someone who couldn’t remember where anything was. And yet,
  her voice had the conviction of a seer.

  The name of her project: Secrets
  Under the Skin. She believes in performance, both as a demonstration of
  religious belief and as a methodology for research. Dance is not just art, it
  is a sacred act. Research is not just data collection, it is a human
  connection. She studies the ways dance fills dancers with spirits. In our case,
  this is quite literal. In Arará ceremonies, such as the Festival of San Lazaro,
  which Jill and I would eventually witness in Cuba, dancers call down the spirits
  of their pantheon to possess their bodies. This was the world my grandmother
  spoke of. This was the world I tried to write in a novel without actually
  experiencing myself.

  “Performance is the only way to understand,” she said,
  handing me a painting of a shrine she’d visited in Cuba. Reds and yellows lit up the
  image. The brushstroked sunset graced the purple-draped shrine of San Lazaro,
  leaning on his crutches. The painting felt like a door I was afraid to open.
  “If we go, we will dance, we will chant. We will have a misa for your
  grandmother. I had one. The roof lifted off the walls. You’ll never be the
  same. But if we go, you have to commit. You have to be all in.”

  Commitment was something I didn’t know much about. I was
  supposed to commit in Alaska.
  I’d moved there with my girlfriend, who was supposed to become my fiancée, who
  was supposed to become my wife. Before that, I’d lived in Colorado
  and Georgia alone while she
  finished nursing school in Florida.
  She often complained about our living apart. I often relished a life without
  roots.

  Once we moved in together, at the farthest corner of the
  continent, we walked around with an edge. I loved Alaska,
  still love Alaska,
  but at the time I couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that I didn’t belong. Always
  in the back of my mind was the thought of flight, a reminder that any commitment
  was an illusion. A year had gone by in Anchorage
  and I still had my books in boxes and a majority of my clothes in suitcases.

  My career also reflected this state of Kenko-esque
  impermanence. I was on a term contract, which was set to expire in May. I had
  applied to PhD programs in the state of Washington
  as a backup plan. My girlfriend was on contract at Alaska Regional
  Hospital for another two
  years, which meant we’d live apart again. Nothing in my life came close to
  signaling I was capable of committing.

  Before leaving Jill’s office, I gave her the most honest
  response possible: “I need to go to Cuba.”

  As I walked out into the chill of late winter, I became
  filled with doubt. Could I afford Cuba? Would the university provide
  me a grant if my contract is not renewed? Was it safe to travel to Cuba? I was
  born in Miami, Florida;
  why would I wait until Alaska to find someone
  with whom to travel to Cuba?
  And—why would Jill trust me so easily after meeting me only once?

  It took me a couple nights before I could tell Erin, my
  girlfriend, about the offer. She said nothing at first. Instead, she continued
  cutting pieces of chicken and scooping them into Tupperware containers. Her
  eyes were puffy and her curly hair webbed around her silent face. It was her
  second week on night shift. During her first week, she cried each night before
  leaving to work. The silence was an improvement.

  “You can barely speak Spanish,” she finally said and packed
  her dinner in her backpack. “Is this serious?”

  How could I answer that?

  Arará is a religious tradition founded upon serious belief.
  Their tradition is mostly oral, preserved by the younger generations only when
  they sing cantos and dance steps alongside elders. Percussive musical styles
  reach back to African roots and have been passed down by virtue of younger
  drummers playing during ceremonies. These styles are crucial to the community.
  Each style plays a particular role in inducing the spirits to possess those
  dancing. If a possession does not occur, there is deep disappointment. When a
  possession does occur, others dress the individual in the colors representing
  the occupying spirit and guide the individual to the nearby shrine. The
  sacredness of a present spirit means validation for everyone. It means their
  lives cannot be denied. All of this I knew from reading. All of this I would
  learn from witnessing.

  After I explained this to Erin,
  she started to cry. Although, she assured me it was because she hated working
  nights. “I was so excited to move to Alaska,
  I committed to a contract that is killing me,” she said. She wiped her tears,
  smearing eyeliner. Strands of her hair stuck to her moist cheeks. “Once you’re
  in Cuba,”
  she said, “there’s no backing out. You hate dancing.”

  I nodded. It was true. I never viewed writing as performing
  but as the complete opposite. Because I didn’t dance, didn’t speak, didn’t
  boldly enter the world, I hid in my den and wrote. What did I know of
  performance? Erin kissed me and left for work,
  leaving me in an apartment that did not feel empty, despite my being alone,
  because of the thousands of thoughts filling my head.

  What did it mean to commit? When I first moved to Alaska, I went to get a
  haircut. The stylist, a snide girl in her twenties with a voice like calving
  ice, asked me, “What are you running from?” Before that, in Colorado,
  my neighbor told me I might like Boulder
  if I stayed long enough. Jill’s methodology for research somehow carried
  personal application. She followed strategies employed by
  anthropologists/memoirists such as Paul Stoller and Ruth Behar. For them,
  cultural identity is defined by a series of choices, conscious or unconscious,
  made within a set of specific guidelines. Because those guidelines change from
  culture to culture, we can only learn through participation. Researchers who
  merely observe miss everything. There’s too much distance. In order to truly
  understand a particular culture, we need roots. We need to “embody” the lives
  we witness. We need to become “vulnerable observers,” to use Behar’s words.

  To commit is to perform. To perform is to be made
  vulnerable.

  If my evasive nature—“running” from state to state—obviated
  any opportunity to be made vulnerable, what made Jill think I could commit to Cuba? I’d spent
  my life moving in the opposite direction, northwest.

  The second time I met with Jill in her office, she radiated
  expectation, even though her grin suggested she knew what I’d say before saying
  it. I asked if she believed ceremonial possessions were actually real. “I
  believe in their power to believe,” she said. “Otherwise, there’s nothing to
  write about.”

  Jill wanted me to write the stories I would learn in Cuba.
  She wanted her data to be captured in narrative format, in a style similar to
  the way the stories are told. Performance
  research. She believed in art as a form of ethnographic representation. She
  believed I could contribute to her already prodigious project. She believed,
  even if I did not believe I was capable of such a contribution, because, as she
  often reminds me, she found me.

• En Trance

  

  The first ceremony of the week-long Festival de San Lazaro.

  ---

  We were sitting at a brightly lit café in a neighborhood in
  Colón. The dirt streets stretched into darkness in each direction. Maybe two
  houses were lit; the rest faded into the night sky glowing impossibly clear
  constellations.

  This was my first dinner in Cuba. I should have been thinking
  about the questions I would ask during interviews. I should have been deciding
  on a schema for how I’d record my observations. Methodology was furthest from
  my mind, though. Instead, I worried about the food—lettuce washed in
  contaminated water, meat not thoroughly cooked.

  The servers all wore Santa Claus hats and garland necklaces
  with flickering red and green lights. Christmas is still a relatively new
  holiday in Cuba,
  since the revolution that is.

  A stray dog limped into the café and rubbed against my leg.
  I nudged it away from me. It whimpered and limped into what I believe was the
  kitchen.

  Before I could worry too much about the dog sniffing around
  the food while it was being prepared, Jill, the lead researcher, asked Roberto
  what we should do if he fell into a trance.

  Roberto, a Santero who served as our religious guide, smiled
  bashfully. He pulled his white scarf up over his face and waved the question
  away with his other hand. “Es no problema,”
  he said. Everything he wore was white, except for his green and yellow
  bracelet, the colors of Oshun, the orisha of rivers and love.

  “No, no,” Jill said. “Do you want me to bring you back or
  let you go?”

  The tone of Jill’s voice, and Roberto’s coy response, struck
  me more than what was actually being discussed. Falling into trance means a
  spirit has possessed the mind and body. This happens almost exclusively at
  ceremonies when the drummers have reached a level of performance that can only
  be called divine. Everyone present dances the same dance, as one step, chanting
  the same chants, as one voice. The power of unison and musical energy acts like
  tundra charged with electrons, which attracts lightning from a storm thousands
  of miles above. The analogy is almost perfect; the spirits are believed to
  “come down.”

  So, Jill was essentially asking Roberto what he wanted us to
  do if he became possessed, and her question came as normal as if she was asking
  what he wanted to drink.

  In Cuba,
  everything strange is normal. Magic is mundane. The most unbelievable stories,
  when told, are heard without the slightest disbelief.

  Melba, our translator, said, “We have to bring him back.” Of
  course, she said this in English so Jill, and not Roberto, would understand. “How
  will he interpret the ceremony in a trance?”

  Of course, I thought to myself, the only concern in the
  event of a spirit possession is who would narrate the possession.

  Worrying about getting sick from the food suddenly felt like
  a concern from another world.

  A shooting star streaked across the sky, leaving a green
  trail. Those who noticed showed as much amazement as someone in Alaska would show while
  watching snow fall. Our server, followed by the stray dog, brought our food. The
  smell of mojo and platanos maduros reminded me of my grandmother. I remembered
  the stories she used to tell me of Cuba, each one having to do with
  spirits. One in particular was about a woman who kept an affair from her
  husband. Eventually, her husband caught her and killed her lover. It didn’t
  matter, Nana told me. Her lover’s spirit visited her often and they continued
  their affair. Flesh and ghost. Carnal and spiritual.

  During Nana’s last days, my family attributed all of her
  supernatural stories to her worsening Alzheimer’s. “She’s crazy,” my mother
  would say with tears in her eyes. “Don’t instigate her,” my sister would
  admonish me. “You are making her worse by validating her lunacy.”

  I was the only one who listened—really listened. I believed everything she said. Her stories were
  normal to her and while they weren’t necessarily “normal” to me, I fully entered
  her world. I’d lost that ability. Something happened when she died that I can’t
  explain. Maybe that’s why I was in Cuba. Maybe I needed to live her
  stories in order to remember her.

  It was after Nana died that I left Florida, lived in state after state, changed
  job after job. I lost my ability to remain in step. A normal life became a
  chimera, something I could not define even though I chased it blindly. Or did
  the idea of a normal life chase me? I don’t know. Traveling to Cuba for
  the Festival of San Lazáro is anything but a normal life.

  After dinner, we went to a house where the first night of
  the festival was taking place. About sixty people were gathered under a hut.
  Four drummers, one of them no older than thirteen, beat their hands in a blur
  against drums that were purported to be hundreds of years old. According to
  Roberto, the drums were carried here by enslaved Africans and repaired using skins only from
  Africa. I quickly noticed I was the only white
  person present, and it wasn’t even close. The second lightest skin tone was the
  color of ancient bronze. I am the color of fear. The stares of everyone present
  held me in what felt like eternal displacement. That was the closest I’ve come
  to feeling the existential crisis of diaspora.

  Roberto must have sensed my discomfort. He pulled me after
  him into the room with the altar. Statues of white-skinned San Lazáros in
  purple cloaks and Caridad del Cobres crowned an arch. Under the arch, sheltered
  by dried palm leaves, was a statue of San Lazáro with black skin. The
  arrangement symbolized how Arará survived in Colonial Cuba. Arará, with its
  traditions rooted in West Africa, was outlawed in Cuba. Practitioners were brutally
  persecuted. Enslaved people had the choice of converting to Catholicism or suffering
  painful deaths. The result was a genius demonstration of creative literacy.
  Afro-Cubans syncretized symbols and names from Catholic hagiography and applied
  them to their traditions. Therefore, Saint Lazarus (Catholic), San Lázaro
  (Arará), Babalú-Ayé (Santería), and Sakpata (Ewe), became different
  representations of essentially the same figure. Afro-Cubans went on celebrating
  their religion to the ignorance of European slave-owners, oppressive
  governments, and dominant cultural norms.

  Hanging from the ceiling was a stuffed animal monkey.

  Roberto informed me this meant that once you become a Santero, you are no
  longer “someone’s monkey.” You are free.

  I stood in awe, breathing in the smell of plantains hanging
  from another part of the ceiling, the smell of rum poured as an offering on the
  altar and of tobacco spicing the air. Just as Roberto guided me out of the
  shrine, a man who couldn’t be older than forty, who had been dancing—dare I use
  the word?—normally cranked his head
  back and flung out his arms, knocking a woman next to him down. His body thrust
  against the ground, blurred like the drummers’ hands. The hard soil carried the
  vibrations to my own feet. I felt them thunder up my spine. His legs dangled
  like loose ribbons as he appeared to float. 
  Float? Then, as if cables attached to his shoulders controlled him, his
  body was tossed into the crowd, knocking more people down.

  Roberto danced. “Míra,
  él está en trance,” he said, smiling.

  I found Jill, who was also dancing. Melba and her husband,
  Miguel, chanted along with the singers. Only three people didn’t dance: the
  apparently possessed man and two Santeros who tried holding him still.

  As they restrained him a mere six feet from me, I stared at
  the entranced man’s face, searching for a sign of cognizance. His eyes were
  blank. I mean this literally, as in there were only the whites of his eyes, and
  figuratively: there was something apparent that was not warm flesh human. Something
  beyond human. Drool spilled from his trembling mouth. The statues of San Lázaro
  had more expression.

  “Es un muerto,”
  Roberto said. “Es Palo.”

  Palo is a variation of Arará that focuses more on elemental
  powers and communication with spirits of the dead rather than orishas, divine
  representations of deities. A muerto
  is one such dead spirit, who can do damage if “mounting” someone, the term used
  when a muerto possesses the living.

  The ceremony’s host, a man dressed in traditional burlap
  with purple ribbons streaming from his clothing, purified the possessed man by
  passing aja sticks, a bundle of broomlike bristles, throughout his body. The
  possessed man was carried into the altar room, and then the host purified the
  rest of us, to ensure the muerto
  wouldn’t possess anyone else.

  The drummers never stopped. The heartbeat music pumped blood
  into the veins of each person. Jill looked at me with disappointment. I was the
  only person not dancing. How could I? How could everyone go on as if what just
  happened was normal?

  The dance required each person to place their hands on their
  head, then hold their hands up in the air. Again I thought of Nana. Her
  stories. What did it mean to believe? Was listening not enough?

  And what about methodology? As if I could think about that
  now. Was the simple act of recording observations insufficient? “Go to Cuba,” Nana
  used to say. “See that the stories are real.” Participate. Perform.

  “She’s crazy.”

  “You are making her worse.”

  “I believe in their power to believe.”

  My knees felt weak. My stomach twisted upon itself, and I
  knew it wasn’t the food. I was terrified for the man who fell into a violent
  trance. I kept looking up at Roberto, whose hazel eyes reflected the light from
  the fire, assuring me that he was still present, still in control of his own
  soul. Roberto continued to dance. He looked at me, still smiling, nodded for me
  to follow his step. I swallowed hard and tried.

• Forbidden Worlds

  

  Our host fmaily gathered around the TV to watch Raul Castro announce the return of the Cuban spies, which would improve relations with the U.S.
  

  ---

  As my departure from Cuba approached, I experienced a sort
  of barotrauma, much like decompression sickness experienced by divers who
  resurface too fast. I needed to slowly ascend, slowly return to the world I’d
  left behind in America. Cuba is a country cocooned in layers, and this is mostly because of its status as a
  country forbidden from the world in which I live. The embargo has encouraged
  Americans to imagine Cuba in vastly different ways. The “Miami Cubans” envision the island in its
  oligarchic state under Batista. They dream about the haciendas Castro seized.

  They believe they will one day reclaim their property, some so that they can
  capitalize on it and others so that they can return to their aristocratic tropical
  lifestyles. For the “Miami Cubans,” it doesn’t matter that Cubans have suffered
  their share of loss as well. The only thing that matters is vociferating the
  evil of Castro’s rule to enforce an embargo that has done nothing but help
  isolate the island. “The people there have it bad, so we should keep the
  embargo in place,” they say, even though the embargo contributes to the people
  having “it bad.”

  My brother-in-law, whom Cubans would call a “Miami Cuban,” describes Cuba
  in a way that is far worse than in reality. According to him, a family in Cuba
  has to apply to the government to have a cake for someone’s birthday; and a
  single family is only allowed one cake.

  The “Utopians” believe Castro’s Cuba is paradise. The idea
  of free healthcare, strong education, and a life free of the poison of material
  greed stand as absolute ideals that should be upheld everywhere. My brother by
  blood is one such “utopian.” Before I left America, he envied my journey, said
  he couldn’t wait to hear how impressed I was by a country that “valued its
  people.”

  Because of the way layers work—skin folding over skin, shell
  extending to rind—the facets of Cuba’s identity change depending on how far one
  peels back its casing. The island is a contradiction, a paradox in which both
  the “Utopians” and the “Miami Cubans” are right.

  I stayed with a loving family while in Colón. Andrea, who
  owned the house, cooked breakfast and dinner for us (a team of four
  researchers) each night. During our stay, Andrea’s granddaughter turned nine. There
  were three cakes made; one was just for us visitors, two of whom (me and Jill) were
  foreigners. There were also meringues, pastries, and a counter crowded with
  flan.

  But it’s not all rich yellow cake with guava cream filling.
  The healthcare system, I learned, is essentially reserved for tourists. This is
  controlled via Cuba’s dual currencies, the Cuban Peso and the Cuban Convertible.
  The latter of which is an artificially inflated currency that remains equal to
  the U.S. dollar to provide tourists with exceptional buying power. Most Cubans
  are paid in Cuban Pesos, which is so weak compared to the Cuban Convertible
  they can hardly afford to buy oranges from the market.

  I heard stories of Cubans breaking down in tears at the
  sight of a flat screen TV.

  I walked down nameless streets in poor neighborhoods at 2
  a.m. Doors to houses were open. Strangers waved. I felt safer than I do walking
  around Anchorage at 10 p.m.

  I met people waiting twenty-two years for a chance to leave.

  There are other layers, those which act as boundaries.

  The music of Arará suffered a long history of banishment
  from Cuban airwaves. Social organizations, cabildos, were formed in secrecy so
  that the enslaved could continue their religious beliefs without persecution. For
  most of Castro’s rule, the music was also prohibited by law. My grandmother,
  raised a Roman Catholic, became interested in Santería when one of her parents’
  servants, a Santera, protected her from the incessant loneliness that haunted
  my grandmother her entire life. She had to hide her interest from her strict
  father, who threatened beating her if he found her with anything besides a
  cross. And then here I was, in Cuba, claiming roots to the island, but knowing
  very little of the language. My parents never taught me Spanish, thinking it
  would interfere with my learning English. My grandmother spoke to me in
  Spanish, but not enough for me to become fluent.

  The genius of syncretism is the blur of forbidding
  boundaries. Perhaps this is Cuba’s gift to history.

  The cabildos quickly allowed for inclusive membership.
  Tribes and clans from different African traditions interacted and shared
  elements. Yoruba, Kongo, Pataki, Vodun, Arará, and Catholicism contributed to
  new forms of religious tradition that, by the 20th century, became
  difficult to identify as separate beliefs for European powers seeking to
  silence the rhythm of the batá. This is the deepest layer I found in Cuba: in
  Agromonte, almost the direct center of the island, beneath several layers
  pressurizing me in a world I still don’t quite understand, I was accepted into
  the community, encouraged to dance, sing, eat food offered to sacred altars. It
  didn’t matter that I was white, that I spoke a very rough Spanish, or that I was
  North American. When you go there, when you climb beneath both the imagined and
  real layers of the place, you find the boundaries vanish.

• Conviction

  

  The altar for San Lazaro and Chango, the orisha who walks with San Lazaro.
  The desserts are left as offerings for both spirits.

  My research in Cuba is impossible.

  I can use physical descriptions to illustrate those who
  became possessed for you readers. I can describe a young man convulsing, his body
  contorted on a pair of crutches, his left foot dangling like it had been
  smashed with a hammer. I can tell you about the cigar that hung from his lips,
  the yellow foam that formed around his mouth. Yellow the color of tobacco, the
  color of his burlap clothing and straw hat. I can do my best to write what I
  saw: eyes that were hollow, that did not focus on anything in particular,
  a face that became something other than a face. A woman who screamed as if tormented
  by pain, clawed at her hair, and then ran out into the dirt street.

  Or maybe I can’t.

  There was too much for me to notice, much too much to write.
  After being overwhelmed by a series of violent possessions at a ceremony,
  I stood under an arch, away from the thumping drums and trembling earth. It took
  me thirty minutes before I realized a dead dove was hanging by its feet above me.
  Blood had dried under its eyes.

  “El ave mantiene a los malos éspiritus,”
  Roberto, the religious guide of the research team, told me. Birds keep bad spirits away.

  Jill, the lead researcher, had asked me the night before,
  “Is it possible to represent what we are seeing in any authentic way?”

  As a writer, I naturally believed that it was possible. Now
  I’m not so sure. How do I convince readers that actual
  spirits possessed actual people the way I saw it? How do I know that I’m even convinced?   

  “I believe in their power to believe.”

  The young man lasted a good two hours convulsing on those
  crutches. Was he acting out the role of San Lázaro with impeccable performance?
  The foam fizzed around his chin and dripped onto the ground. His eyes shook,
  rolled up into his skull, and his head swung from shoulder to shoulder.
  Somehow, the cigar stayed in his mouth.

  Even if I didn’t believe it, I could feel it. I mean, feel it.
  The drums matched the beating of my heart.
  Something like desire built in my stomach, but a desire for what, I don’t know.

  My body swayed to the percussive beat, which is something I’ve
  never done. Never have I danced in public. I couldn’t help it, either.
  The frantic screams of the possessed woman who ran into the dark street could still be heard.
  Her howl matched the intensifying rhythm. It sounded like singing. The drums.
  Their music came from somewhere within my chest.
  I watched the musicians bounce their sacred hands against the taut skin of their ancient instruments,
  but was certain I was the source of that entrancing music.

  Roberto started to shake. His head swung back and smacked
  the stone pillar holding up the thatched roof. I reached out to hold him, unsure
  at first what was happening, but his flailing arms struck me, knocking me back.
  His hazel eyes became clear puddles. In a second, he was gone. Some other
  spirit had taken over. He fell forward, seizure like, and I caught him.

  A circle of dancers formed around us. Someone tossed kernels
  of corn, a purifier, at our feet. Roberto was only a few inches taller, but I
  couldn’t hold him up for long. His body had the weight of someone twice his
  size. It felt like he was pushing me down, into the earth. All the while his
  arms swung and his head rolled. His body became electric.

  Jill, Melba, and Miguel ran to me and helped lift Roberto.

  Free of his weight, my legs gave out and I fell onto the ground. The three of
  them carried Roberto away from the ceremony, out towards the car. Even they
  struggled holding him.

  Someone from the crowd, a man in a denim jacket and frill beanie,
  pulled me to my feet and hugged me. “Lo
  hermoso,” he said. His eyes were watery, like he’d just seen a miracle.

  My entire body was trembling. Never had I felt pressure like that.

  How can I write that? How do I explain it in a way that is real, in a way that represents what
  Arará means?

  Later, on the way home from the ceremony, I asked Roberto if
  he could describe what he felt as he fell into a trance. He looked at me and
  thought for a while. It was as though no one had thought to ask him this
  question. Suddenly, I worried I’d offended him by asking, as if my question
  implied something disingenuous about his experience. As if I had just said,
  “Prove it!”

  Miguel drove our rental car down an unpaved street
  surrounded on both sides by cane fields. The only light came from the stars.

  In Spanish, he told me that he had been listening to the
  music, dancing to it. Then, suddenly it felt like the drums were within him,
  like his stomach created the music. It got louder and louder. Finally, he felt
  a force shoot down into him from above.

  Jill and I sat in the backseat with Roberto. After he said this,
  I looked out of my window, as if the night sky would provide clarity. I traced
  the stars forming Ursa Major.

  If I had felt exactly what Roberto felt, would that make
  representing the experience any more possible? Did I want to feel what Roberto felt?
  Research is about questions, I remembered from graduate school. My mind spun with them.

  The rest of the drive back to Colón, where we stayed,
  Roberto slept. He was usually an animated man, convivial and full of energy.
  The night took a lot out of him. Jill, Melba, and Miguel spoke in Spanish about
  percussive styles, about the aging tradition of Arará and the importance of
  including younger generations.

  I pulled my legs up and sat crunched in the back corner of
  the car, squeezing my stomach, which became a bit unsettled at the ceremony.
  I wanted never to let go of whatever it was I felt.