The Temple of My Familiar

Lissie and Hal

Hal writes to Suwelo, informing him of Lissie’s death. He encloses slides of her most recent paintings, saying they are incredible, but strange. He also sends cassette tapes that Lissie made for Suwelo to be given to him upon her passing.

In the tapes, Fanny mentions how Suwelo never spoke about his parents in all his time spent with Hal and Lissie. She encourages him to do so, to work through and let go of the pain he feels about their deaths. She also advises him to make amends with Carlotta for using her body while behaving like she is a “being without substance” (258).

Fanny reveals that she lied about being a Black woman in all her lives; she has occasionally been a white woman and also a man. Fanny recalls the dream memory of another, ancient life. She was the son of an African woman who was the queen of her people and had a lion named Husa as her familiar. The queen kept her son close and rubbed various ointments concocted from nuts and berries onto his skin.

The queen’s son grew up, and when he was old enough to mate, he found a playmate who liked him back. The girl, who had a flying serpent named Ba as her familiar, and the queen’s son went away together. After they made love, the son fell asleep; when he woke up, he found his mate rubbing into his skin the same concoctions as his mother. She revealed this was to make him look like everyone else and showed him his reflection in a pool of water.

The queen’s son was horrified to discover that his skin was naturally pale and his hair yellow. Upset and horrified, he chased his mate away and accidentally killed Ba. He ran away from the rest of his tribe to never return and wandered for years before finding companionship with a litter of dogs.

Lissie remembers another lifetime sometime after this one in which she was a lion. Men were beginning to dominate women, and with the “fake familiars” of dogs by their side, they chased away the women and children’s actual familiars. Lissie the lion was dejected to be chased away from her woman, but that was the fate of all lions. Over thousands of years, lions grew increasingly more distant from humans and now live completely separately.

Lissie confesses the reason she never talked about these lifetimes is because of Hal’s fear of white people and cats. Rafe, however, was afraid of nothing, and knew the entirety of Lissie’s past selves, loving her as she was. Loving Hal was nice, but he only knew a part of who she was; for Lissie, “loving Rafe and being loved by Rafe was the experience of many a lifetime” (375).

Years later, Suwelo visits Hal at the nursing home in Baltimore, which he eventually moves into. Hal is now married to Miss Rose, the other older woman who used to deliver food to Suwelo at Rafe’s house, along with Lissie. Hal tells Suwelo how he stopped painting after Lissie died, and his eyesight gave out completely. Rose would visit him to check in and chat; they both missed Lissie dearly.

Suwelo and Hal talk about the final paintings of Lissie’s life, including one of a big tree with one white person among the Black people on its branches, as well as many paintings of lions. Suwelo gently reveals that Lissie was painting herself and gives Hal the tapes to listen to. Hal is in tears by the end of it, realizing how Lissie loved Rafe more deeply than she did him. Hal blames himself for not letting Lissie be all that she was, and Suwelo comforts him.

Suwelo finds Lissie’s last two paintings in Hal’s room and passes them to Hal, who claims he cannot see anymore. After some concentration, he sees just a reddish spot in the corner of one of the paintings, before flinging it away. Suwelo, however, is hopeful that Hal’s vision is retuning: The painting is a self-portrait of Lisse as the lion, and she has painted a red, high-heeled shoe onto the lion’s back paw.

Fanny

Before his death, Ola tells Fanny about his marriage to Mary Jane. They were never lovers; it was a marriage of convenience, to allow her to stay on in the country when white people were being asked to leave. She turned up at his office in the ministry one day, explaining how she started running an art school called M’Sukta school. Ola had already heard of it and went out to take a look at Mary Jane’s request. The school was beautifully maintained, and all the students had either physical or mental illnesses or disabilities.

Mary Jane told Ola the origin of the school’s name, tracing the connection back to her great-aunt’s great-aunt, whom M’Sukta brought to Africa. After reading Eleandra Peacock’s diaries, Mary Jane came to Africa and painted for a year, before eventually opening the school. Ola and Mary Jane decided to marry to prevent her deportation, and this decision distressed the government, which had banned interracial marriage but encouraged polygamy. Over time, they became close friends and allies.

Mary Jane didn’t attend Ola’s funeral. Fanny met her late, and Mary Jane told her she couldn’t bear to sit around and listen to people pretend that they would miss him. Mary Jane revealed that Ola passed away at her house, in the middle of a rehearsal for his latest play. Fanny took her leave, as she had to head home, but promised to return; she and Nzingha intended to mount productions of their father’s plays and write some of their own. Mary Jane approved, promising to loan out her school’s gymnasiums for the plays to be performed.

Arveyda, Carlotta, Suwelo, and Fanny

After they become friends, Carlotta describes to Fanny how she met Suwelo again. She moves in with Arveyda, but in a different wing of the house, as the children want to live with their father. Suwelo visits to make amends with Carlotta, and when they first come face-to-face again, they almost don’t recognize each other. Suwelo is amazed to see Carlotta’s shorn head, and even more astounded to discover that she is married to Arveyda. She now works with Arveyda as a musician, and her instruments of choice are bells and chimes. While Arveyda bakes bread, Suwelo and Carlotta catch up. She tells him how she gave up teaching because she was unhappy, and Suwelo describes how he has recently taken up carpentry.

On another occasion, while Fanny and Carlotta are out with the children, Arveyda and Suwelo bake bread together. Arveyda reflects on people’s expectations of him as a musician to keep producing the same mood or sound in his music. However, as an artist, one is always moving and never in the same place. Arveyda and Suwelo reflect on this in the context of their respective relationships.

Carlotta reflects on how she used her sexuality to fix the trouble in her marriage. She hoped Suwelo would marry her and erase the memory of her previous one. She didn’t feel alive anymore, and the massages are what truly helped. Carlotta wonders how Fanny couldn’t be angry with her when she found out, and Fanny reveals she only found out after the affair was over. Carlotta herself was angry with Suwelo for dropping her abruptly, although he was barely more than a distraction. Fanny realizes both Carlotta and Suwelo were using each other to overcome their respective loneliness. Fanny reflects on how she feels sorrow at the world in general these days, rather than anger at people.

Fanny finds it easy and comfortable to talk to Arveyda. He, like her, often falls in love with people that have passed away years ago; they help inspire his music. She tells him about the play she is writing with Nzingha, inspired by Ola. Arveyda, in turn, tells her about his mother. Carlotta and him went back to his hometown to learn more about Katherine Degos, and met Arveyda’s aunt, Frudier.

Frudier revealed how Katherine’s birth name was Georgia Smith. She showed Arveyda and Carlotta photographs of Arveyda’s parents: His father was of Black Mexican, Filipino, and Chinese heritage and came through town as a road construction worker. He moved on to a job in another state a few years after Arveyda was born, but never returned; they later heard he had died on the job in an accident.

Frudier hated her sister. She didn’t like what she thought was her sister’s pretentiousness with her name change and the church she started, and she envied and resented her beauty, her handsome suitor, and her child. Arveyda is glad Carlotta was on the trip with him to help him bear his aunt’s vitriol about his mother. Sensing Arveyda’s pain, Fanny impulsively kisses him.

Arveyda, Carlotta, Suwelo, and Fanny become close friends, visiting each other often and spending time together. One evening, the two couples use the hot tub together, after which Fanny and Arveyda step away for her to give him a massage. Carlotta tells Suwelo about Arveyda and Zedé’s affair, and their trip to Zedé’s home country after. Carlotta and Arveyda believed Zedé had been killed by counterrevolutionaries in her home country after she stayed on there. However, Zedé managed to find her own mother, and the two escaped to Mexico, where they now live. Zedé married a shaman, while her mother became one herself.

Suwelo tells Carlotta about his own parents, who died in what everyone called a “car wreck.” Suwelo’s father, Louis Sr., was a soldier in World War II and lost an arm and his peace of mind in the process. He drank heavily after and was an abusive husband; he would often drive while intoxicated and hold onto his terrified wife, Marcia, to prevent her from getting out of the speeding car with their child. Suwelo was in college when they died and remembers looking at his parents’ bodies for the last time. He sees Marcia’s fingernails, bloodied and broken, and realizes she was trying to get out of the car. Suwelo wonders how he repressed so much terror all his life, and he feels his heart lighten as he takes Lissie’s advice and opens up about his parents.

Fanny and Arveyda are both naked as Fanny begins her massage. Arveyda’s body opens up under Fanny’s fingers. As she massages him, they each feel a deep sense of connection to the other, and the massage progresses into lovemaking. Afterwards, they reflect on how they recognize each other’s spirit and feel a shared sense of kinship.