Artifacts

Always listen to the Old Wives

stock image edited by author

"There she is!" a voice screeched as Maribel Barnes jumped out of her cab and dashed up the back steps to the museum. The reporters were waiting for the opening even in the rain, or they'd been tipped off somehow, always, everywhere she went. Even with a wig and bulky clothing, the press recognized her. She knew that was what she'd asked for, and now she must put a stop to it. She wanted her life back.

She didn't bother to dodge the cameras, but just ran in the building as quickly as she could. Security knew she was coming, and Nigel was on duty, both to open the door for her, and to block anyone else coming in. He didn't ask her why she needed to get into the exhibit again tonight-it was ready to open in less than twelve hours. If she could do what she came here to do, the nightmare would be over.

Joe unlocked the gallery for her and turned on the lights. "It's okay, Ms. Barnes. Nobody is going to bother the artifacts tonight." He smiled, probably thinking that she wanted to protect them herself, her path to fame, her footnote in the anthropology books.

"Thanks, Joe," she said. "I won't be but a few minutes." She shut the door and faced the paintings she had brought back from her study of the women of the Sheash group from the Cote D'Ivorie. Juices and dyes from native plants painted loving on fragile paper in symbols for rain, for love, for money, for health, and her own, for fame. Their magic had certainly worked.

Carefully Maribel slipped each painting from its acrylic case and into the large pocket sewn inside her coat. She gathered all the brochures as well. None of the images must remain. How hard it had been to get them here, and how hard it was now to destroy them.

She turned off the lights and closed the door behind her. She had told the taxi not to wait, but to send another for her in half an hour. She must get the artifacts home before any more damage was done.

The taxi was there, but so were the reporters. Thank the gods for Nigel, all six feet and two-hundred-fifty pounds of him. He walked her just down the steps and put her in the cab, blocking half the flashing lights. He posed for the cameras as the taxi pulled away, and the reporters swarmed around him, like yellow jackets on the scent of the first sting.

Her cell phone rang.

Johan.

Again.

How wonderful he had seemed before her trip, and he had fallen in love with her, but now he was always calling, needing to know where she was every minute.

She didn't answer. Maybe she could get back to her apartment and be done with it before he came looking for her. No, she should call him back and tell him not to come over, that she felt…No, no matter what she said, he'd want to be there with her. The rain was getting worse. The taxi stopped in the parking garage to let her out. She paid the man, gave him a tip--might as well while the money lasted. That too would be gone soon. Only two reporters loitered by the door. She covered her face and went inside. They had been asked to leave often enough that they did not follow.

Once in her apartment, she climbed on a chair to disable the smoke detectors. She brought her Dutch oven and some tools into the bathroom and turned the vent fan on.

The paintings, the artifacts were so beautiful. Rain as drawn in greens and grays with flowers all around the border-the escarpment bloomed with the rain when there were no floods to wipe out whole villages. She lit one corner of the painting and held it over the pan she had placed in the sink. Once it caught fire, she dropped it. The paper sizzled and sputtered, as if it were still wet after all these months. Mother Asheka said the painting held the rain spirit, that it would be released when the Mothers came for it.

How beautiful Mother Asheka was with her white teeth against her leathery skin. She was a gentle soul who had convinced the elder mothers to allow Maribel to witness their ceremony. They had agreed, reluctantly, and Maribel had been able to watch, though not participate in the paintings.

"Magic is not for the daily life," Mother Asheka had said. "Do you pray to Allah or to Jesus? Maybe you do not believe in magic."

"Teach me to believe," Maribel said. "In my land, I do not believe in anything." That at least was true. Neither her Christian relatives nor her Pagan friends had shown her anything beyond what she could sense on her own.

"We make the artifact," Mother Asheka explained.-their word was sh'shte, juice on paper, "to pray the Mothers to help us. The painting shows what we ask for, and it is a gift to the mothers, so it must be left for Them to take."

"In my land, some people make pictures from sand, artifacts, to heal people or to bring rain. These too are destroyed when the ceremony is over." Maribel told about the sprinkling of sand and pollen on the ground to make beautiful designs which were swept away at the end."

"Yes, that would be a good artifact. These are wise ones, in your land."

"But the sand painters have learned a way to change the designs so that my people can have them to look at, to keep." Maribel had a small sand painting in her living room. "They do not make the whole drawing, only a part, which can then be saved and kept. Could your elder mothers make artifacts so that others could see their beautiful designs? These would not be real, but somewhat changed, so that they would not capture the spirits."

"Why would we do that?"

"For money, to help the village co-op." In all her time here, she had seen incredible cooperation among the women, no sense of personal advance at the expense of others. She wanted to bring the art back to the world, to create a market for it, both for her own fortune and to help the women.

Mother Asheka smiled, and patted Maribel's cheek, as she would that of a child. "We will get enough money this year. We do not need more and more."

Maribel could still feel the love from that caress. By now, Mother Asheka knew she had stolen the paintings and brought them back to Philadelphia to finish her thesis. Everything had been perfect, until it started raining. Flood swept through Korhogo and then Mali and Ghana. The last scrap of the rain painting sizzled into ash in the pan as a gust blew more rain against her window.

She lit the artifact for abundance, which caught so quickly she nearly burned her fingers before she could release it. Then the one for money, which did not want to catch fire at all. She lit a candle to hold the flame as long as it took. This one smoked and stank like rotten cabbage. Her new grant money was up in smoke too, but she couldn't stop now. The Mothers were waiting.

Her cell phone rang as she picked up the love painting. She let it ring. Her answering machine blinked with several messages. She would speak to no one until she was finished. She might lose her nerve. Maybe she should keep the love painting, just for a while. She laid it down, and took up her painting, the one for fame.

The elder mothers had not understood at first what she wanted or why she would use magic to get it rather than work. However, she explained in French, and Mother Akesha elaborated in their village language that the honor had not come with her work. The mothers had nodded, smiled at each other, and each had added to the painting. It was a communal effort, unlike the others. Again, Maribel saw their smiling glances, the looks of elders who are amused at children. Nevertheless, it had worked, and too well. She could not go outside her apartment without cameras flashing in her face. It was unbelievable to be famous for an anthropological paper.

She lit the bottom corner, and it began to burn. The heat made it sticky, and she could not release it. She grabbed tongs to pull it from her fingers, taking a layer of skin away with the painting. She could almost hear the elder mothers cackling as the last bits flared up and turned into ash. She cleaned and bandaged second degree burns on her fingers.

"I should have used the tongs for all of them!" she said aloud, picking up the last painting gingerly. She lit the love painting.

"Should have used them for what?" Johan appeared in the bathroom doorway. He gazed for a second at the burning painting, and then jerked it from her. "What the hell are you doing, you stupid woman!" The flame singed him, and he dropped the painting on the floor, stamping on it to put out the fire. He grabbed her arms and dragged her into the bedroom, throwing her down on her bed. "I knew something was up when you didn't answer my calls. Have you lost your mind?"

Maribel collapsed, her nerve gone. "They have to be destroyed. It's hard to explain, but they are magic. They must not be kept."

"How were you going to explain this to the museum? To your grant committee?" Johan swung him arm back, then smacked his fist into his hand. "I put in a good word for you! How could you do this to me?" He hunkered over her, completely unlike the urbane gentleman he had always been.

"I was going to leave, just to disappear." She looked at her arms, bruised with his fingerprints. "With the fame painting gone, no one would miss me. No one would remember me."

Johan snatched the burned scrap from the floor. "And this one, the last, what is it?"

"Love."

"So you would throw away my love, too, is that it?"

"No, but," Maribel reached out for him.

"All right, then." He pulled out his lighter and burned the last of the scrap. "Happy now? All gone, and so am I. I thought I had found a woman with some sense for a change."

He stormed out, slamming the door.

It was done, or nearly so. She had to feed the brochures into the shredder-there were too many to burn, and they only had small reproductions of the paintings, which might not matter at all.

She couldn't take that chance. Two sheets at a time she fed them into the shredder, emptying the trashcan and filling it again, two at a time while tears ran down her face and dripped from her chin. All her work gone-her PhD probably rescinded, her work denounced and then forgotten. At two am, the brochures were all gone. It was finished.

Her head hurt and her fingers hurt, but she had to distract her thoughts. She logged in to her computer to check her email and read trivia long enough to calm down.

On her home page, were the paintings, bright, full color, see larger image, getting millions of hits, downloaded to millions of machines who hit that page on a single day. She could never destroy them all.

Someone knocked at her door.

"Open up. It's the police. We have a warrant."

She went to the door to let them in. With any luck, being in jail or a mental hospital would keep the reporters away.

She hadn't asked for luck.