FOURTEEN

. . .

At a certain point the path will break you open. There is nothing to do but give way.

She never remembered my birthday. After a few days, I got tired of waiting and decided to just forget it. Nothing came from my dad either. Of course.

Now she rushes into the room, breathless, hair loose around her face. “Tessa!” she exclaims. I close my notebook, tuck my pencil in the spiral. There is clearly going to be a conversation; I’m not going to have a choice.

She plops down on the bed across from me. I raise my eyebrows. “Yes?”

“Tessa, guess what!” she barrels on.

I wish she’d just spit whatever it is out and get it over with, instead of making me ask what. “What?”

“I got a name!”

Great.

“Cool, Mom, what’s your name?” It’s like there is some kind of script of everything I’m supposed to say, and somehow I’ve memorized it without even noticing.

“Guhahita Prapati!” I knew it would be weird, but that is over the top. “Guha-what?”

“Guhahita Prapati,” she says, stressing all the syllables like I don’t speak English. Or Sanskrit. Which I don’t, but you know what I mean.

Pause. “Well, do you want to know what it means?”

“Sure.” Of course, I don’t want to know what it means. I wish she would quit making me act like I’m interested; it obviously doesn’t matter to her whether or not I actually am.

“It means ‘total surrender, in a secret place in the heart.’” She beams like the football captain asked her to the prom or something.

“Awesome.” That’s what the banana-clip girls say about the prom.

“I know, isn’t it?” She giggles. “So that’s what you can call me!”

“What?” Now I really am asking.

“You can call me it! You know, instead of Mom.”

“Wait. You want me to stop calling you Mom?”

She looks at me like, Duh. “Well, yeah!”

“Um, no.”

That stops her. Her face drops. “What do you mean, no?” she asks, like she can’t believe it.

“I mean no,” I say, like it’s completely obvious, which it is.

She just stares at me.

“I’m not calling you Guhahita Prapati.”

Her cheeks turn pink. “Why not?”

“Because, Mom, you’re my mom! That’s why! And anyway, it’s not even your real name.”

She’s trying to sit on her rapidly increasing irritation, but I know that flicker in her eyes. “Tessa,” she says, holding up a mask of calm and condescension, “that is, in fact, my real name now. In fact,” she says again, “it’s more real than the name of Sarah. It’s my spiritual name. That means it’s actually always been my name. The Guru gave it to me.”

“Yeah? Well, how has it always been your name if the Guru just gave it to you?”

She looks at me like I’m stupid. “The Guru didn’t make it up, Tessa, he just recognized it. On the spiritual plane, it’s been my name since the first moment of this incarnation.”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Mom. A name is just what people call you. It’s not you. If nobody called you that, it wasn’t your name.”

“That’s not true!”

I just look at her.

“Okay, you see that tree?” She points out the window. “That’s actually an elm tree. That’s what it is. If someone accidentally called it an oak tree, that wouldn’t make it an oak tree, would it?”

“No, but someone calling it an elm tree doesn’t make it an elm tree either. It just is what it is, no matter what anybody calls it. You’re not Guhahita Prapati. You’re just you.”

“Look, Tessa,” she says, exasperated, “I’m not going to argue philosophical points with you. The truth is on a totally different plane from conceptual debates, so there isn’t even any point. Just call me Guhahita, please.” She says please like a command.

I am not going to give in on this, though. It’s too much. I’m sick of feeling like she wants to be someone else besides my mom. Like the entire fact that I exist makes her somehow not herself.

“No, Mom, I won’t. It’s fucking weird.” There. I said it. She stares at me, shocked. I take advantage of the opening and barrel through.

“It’s fucking weird, this whole thing is fucking weird, this place and the white clothes and all the Sanskrit words, what is that about, you don’t even speak Sanskrit! We came here and all of a sudden you’re like a totally different person.” It feels good to finally get it out, and hurts at the same time.

She’s upset, so much going on in her face that it looks like it might start throbbing, but she tries to cover over it with calm. “Tessa, I am a different person. Before we came here, I was lost. I was miserable. I didn’t know who I was.”

“Before we came here you were my mom. Remember that? Remember when you used to take me places and make me breakfast and come get me after school? Remember when I used to go to school? You never asked me if I wanted to stop! You never asked me if I wanted to come here. You just picked me up and dragged me here and then ran off and left me by myself.” I’m not really by myself, not anymore, but I leave that part out; that’s mine, not hers, and I swear I will never ever let her know. “Like you always fucking do. And now you want me to call you some stupid fucking name I can’t even pronounce? No way. Fucking forget it.”

She inhales deep, on purpose: her chest goes up and down, her nostrils flare. Then she starts saying some mantra to herself, under her breath. It’s like she’s trying to show me I’m pissing her off without just coming out and admitting it. Like, Look how hard you’re making me work to keep my spiritual composure.

“Just quit it, Mom. You’re not fooling anyone.” I roll my eyes.

And then the mantra stops, and the deep breathing. “God damnit, Tessa, who the hell do you think you are?

You think it’s fun doing telemarketing in Akron to pay for your food when your father won’t even send a dime? You think it’s easy buying the groceries and paying the rent and getting you back and forth to school every single day totally alone? Excuse me if I try to have my own identity. Excuse me if I try, against the wishes of the whole goddamn world, to be happy.”

Now I’m crying. “I’m sorry it’s so hard for you to be my mom. I’m sorry I’m such a big giant drag. What am I supposed to do? Buy our food myself? Go get a job so you can go on a road trip with gypsies? I’m your kid.”

She hurtles forward like she didn’t even hear me. “You know, Tessa, you are just so cruel. After fourteen years I finally get us someplace where I can finally be happy. And you just want to spit all over it.”

“Fifteen,” I say. “What?” “Fifteen. It’s fifteen years. Last week was my birthday.” Her face falls. “Oh, Tessa—” But I don’t want her to feel bad and say sorry and make me forgive her. I want to stay mad. “Right. Did you ever think about maybe the whole goddamn world doesn’t revolve around you? Do you ever even think about whether I’m happy? I didn’t want to come here on your fucking stupid spiritual journey. I didn’t want to hear all about your boyfriends or hang out with that stupid kayaker in Big Sur or switch schools a million times. I didn’t want to go on the road or live in a tent full of mosquitoes. I wish I could live with Dad.”

And now the sorry leaves her eyes; she’s mad.

Good.

“You do, huh?” Her face flushes hot; tears shine her cheeks. It sort of disgusts me. I feel like neither of us has any skin. “Well guess what, Tessa. Your father doesn’t want to live with you.”

I feel like someone kicked me in the gut, but I don’t let her see. I clench my jaw so tight my teeth grate, and I think: I hate you.

“He doesn’t want us, Tessa, okay? He’s not here. I am. I bought the gas. I paid for your room and your food and your goddamn running water. You better learn a little gratitude, lady. Or else you just take your judgments and your attitude and you see how you do on your own, without someone devoting their entire goddamn life to taking care of you.”

Something stronger than blood is coursing through my veins. My fingers are pulsing with it. So are my feet. They need to move. I need to move. Now.

“Fine.” I rip away from her, hurl myself out of the room. The crack of the door slamming echoes down the hall behind me, interrupting everybody’s morning meditation.

. . . . .

I tumble down the back stairs so fast the concrete is a blur, shove the fire door open and run out. Gravel slides under my feet but I don’t think about falling, I just run. People cluster, queuing up for breakfast, but my tears are too thick to see who they are, and I don’t stop to look. All I can think is one thing: Be here please be here please be here.

He is. He’s hunched over the hood of a school bus and I don’t care who hears me, I yell his name from twenty feet away. He turns and sees me crying. Worry takes over his face, soft fills up his green eyes, and that’s the look, that was the look I wanted, the one that says: I see you. I run right into his arms. “Let’s go,” I say. “I don’t care where. Just get me out of here.” He’s nervous driving me out during the middle of breakfast, crowds clutched around the entrance, everyone awake in early morning. He puts his hand between my shoulder blades to push me below the passenger window. I press back, stay sitting up. I don’t care who sees. I find the Violent Femmes tape, and once we pass Atma Lakshmi I turn it up loud. The jangly chords match my nerves, the energy of my body reaching through the air to meet the music. I move my head hard to the snare drum beat and suddenly understand heavy metal headbangers. Colin just watches me and drives. They hurt me bad, but I don’t mind; they hurt me bad, they do it all the time. I know the words now and I sing along, face pointed out the open window, wind biting my teeth. By the time Please Do Not Go comes on, my breathing’s even, tears dried sticky on my cheeks. I lower the volume. Colin turns to me.

“What happened, Tess?”

I don’t even know where to start.

“Mom?” he starts for me. Thank god.

“Yeah.”

“What’d she do now?”

“She’s just so . . .” Frustration curls around my words, catches them before they can get to my mouth. I push them out. “She’s just so selfish.”

He nods.

“It’s like—Okay.” I shift in my seat, dig in for the story. “It’s enough that she forgot my birthday. But now she comes home with a new name, right? They all get new names from the Guru. In Sanskrit or whatever. Fine. But she wants me to call her it.”

He makes a sympathetic face of ugh.

“I know! And it’s like Guhahita Prapati or something. I’m not going to call her that. It’s ridiculous.”

“So what’d you tell her?”

“I told her I’m not calling her that.”

“And?”

I’m a little hesitant to admit it, not sure if he’ll think it’s cool or mean of me. “I told her it’s bullshit.”

“Wow.” He raises his eyebrows, impressed. “Really?”

“Yeah, I did,” speeding up, relieved he doesn’t think it’s mean. “And I told her these people are all fucking freaks and they’re full of shit.”

His eyebrows go up even higher. “Wow.” Then he laughs. “Good for you.”

I feel better, so much my skin can hardly hold it in. He said good for you. I stood up and said the truth and for the first time in my life I didn’t wind up by myself. I feel big, and free, and strong. Maybe there’s a little part tucked way down deep that aches when I think about my mom’s red eyes. A part that’s terrified it’s true my dad has never wanted me. A part that knows that’s why I don’t tell Colin about him. But those parts are all tiny.

Mostly I feel strong.

We drive and drive and listen to the Violent Femmes and finally he says, Where are we going, Tessa? I swallow hard, look at the sky, remind myself of that strong free feeling, and I tell him, We are going to your house.

Finally we pull around a bendy road and he slows down. There’s a wood post with a paint-peeled sign that says “Dee’s Cottages” in almost-chipped-off blue; it swings as we drive by. The tires churn up dust and the trees thin out as we pull into a clearing. Colin shuts the engine off.

My heart is pounding in my throat.

The cabins were all white once upon a time, but they’ve peeled so much that you can see the wood; their roofs are red with little clumps of moss. They ring around a patch of brown grass with picnic tables and a rusty swing set. Colin takes his seat belt off and says, “So, you wanna see my place?”

I am so nervous I think that I might die. My palms have little geysers in them, and when he takes my hand to hold it I almost slip out of his grasp. He hangs on, though.

We cross the patch of grass, past thin screen doors and concrete doorsteps, to the big cabin at the back of the circle. He nods toward the woods. “That’s the path down to the creek. I’ll take you down there later.”

“Cool.”

The screen is ripped, the door unlocked. “Don’t you worry about burglars and stuff?”

“Nah,” he says. “Nobody comes around here. Anyways, there’s not much to steal.”

It’s true: jeans and T-shirts sprawl out on a wire-frame bed; posters spell “Led Zeppelin” and “Dark Side of the Moon” on wood-paneled walls; dim light hits the stucco ceiling when he flips the switch. On the nightstand, he has a book called Siddhartha stacked on top of X-Men comic books. Clouded windows peek out from olive-green wool curtains beside the hot plate and the mini-fridge. It looks like a cross between camp and a teenage boy’s room on TV. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

He goes over to the dresser where his boom box is, sifts through a crate of tapes with no cases. “So what’s our soundtrack, Tess?”

“Um.” I get distracted for a minute, looking at his nightstand. There’s a box of condoms on it. I stare. He doesn’t notice.

“Here, lemme give you some options.” He sifts some more. “J. Geils Band. Police. Ummm . . . the Kinks. Pretenders. REM. Oh! How ’bout early Aerosmith? ‘Toys in the Attic?’”

I yank my gaze off his nightstand, try to come up with an answer. All I know about Aerosmith is that Walk This Way song that was on the radio last year. It was sort of rap. “Are they rap?”

Colin laughs. “No. They’re not rap. Here, listen.”

He presses PLAY; it picks up in the middle of a song, all loud guitars and bluesy beats. “I saw them, you know.”

“Wow, really?” I’m sitting on the bed. There’s no place else to sit. He nods. “‘Back in the Saddle’ tour, 1984. Joe Perry—the guitarist? He was on some crazy drugs, but they rocked.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Me and my buddies Clint and Bennett camped out for two days for those tickets. You’ll meet them. Clint and Bennett.”

“Oh.” He wants me to meet his friends. I’m at his house. I’m sitting on his bed.

“That okay with you?” He chuckles.

“Yeah.” I say, blushing and half mute. “Yeah, of course it’s okay. I’d love to.”

“Cool.” He plops down next to me. A new song comes on. “Oh man! Sweet Emotion. They did this for the encore. It’s a serious classic.”

The bass line thumps a long intro. He leans in and kisses me. The singer comes in, stretching it out as long as he can, Sweeeeeeet emohhhhtion, till it finally gives way to the guitar like an avalanche or a roof caving in, and he opens my lips with his tongue, and I drop into him and the song. His hands are on my back, beneath my shirt, on my bra hook, and it comes undone with one snap, and then his hands are around the front of me and a shiver goes through my entire body and all I can do is fall back onto the bed.

The pillow smells like him and half-clean laundry. He lies down beside me, slides a hand up my shirt. My eyes are open, looking into his. Guitars get louder. He leans in and kisses me again, and when I lift my face he hoists himself up and over, onto me, his corduroy thigh pressing my blue jean legs apart.

These last few weeks it’s always been by a tree or in a car or at the corner of the parking lot: someplace exposed and temporary. We’ve never been really alone. Now it’s different. Now I am lying on his bed inside his room with the door closed, and there’s nobody to knock or walk in, no one even knows where I am; there’s no net of getting-in-trouble to catch me, and I can jump as far and as deep as I want. He presses against me. My body shudders. I have never felt like this. “Let’s do it,” I whisper to him with my eyes open. All movement skids to a halt and he pulls back to look at me. “What?” He stares hard into my eyes, not judging or mean, more like, Where did you come from? and Are you telling me the truth? I could back away, say, Nothing, forget it, just kiss him again like we’ve been kissing all month, but I don’t want to. I want to jump.

“Let’s do it,” I tell him again. He tilts his head to the side. “Tessa.” I don’t say anything. “Tessa, are you sure?” And now my heart starts thumping hard, because suddenly I’m not. Suddenly the fact that he doubts it makes me think that maybe I should too. Maybe it’s wrong; maybe I’m not ready; maybe doing it will take us down a different road I can’t even picture or imagine. Maybe it’s not safe, or he’ll freak out and get uncomfortable, or leave after two months of it like all my mother’s boyfriends. Maybe it actually matters that he’s twenty and technically it’s illegal. I start to panic: What did I just say?

Except then he takes his hand and runs it down my cheek, and somehow the soft of his skin wipes away all those maybes. My heart doesn’t slow down, my breath doesn’t get smooth, I don’t stop being scared, but I know. They always say you’re ready when you love someone, and we’ve never said it but I know that this is love. His smell on the pillow, his hair on my lips, his hand on my back; the familiar when he laughs, the safe in his van with his hand clutched in mine. It doesn’t matter if anyone else wants me but Colin. This is it. I will never be back in this moment again. I gulp in air and tell him, Yes.

Afterward, you’re supposed to feel like a different person. You’re supposed to feel like a woman or something, suddenly adult—all the little-kid hitches gone, transformed into a new, more finished version of yourself. But lying on his bed, sheets swirled around, I still feel like the regular me. Except naked, which is weird, because he’s naked too. I haven’t been in the vicinity of another naked person since my mom and a bunch of her friends took me to a nude beach when I was six, and even then I wore my bathing suit. And anyway, the two experiences don’t exactly compare.

He lies there, sprawled on the pillow like it’s totally normal. The sheet’s pulled halfway up his stomach so I can see his chest, the muscles of it, dark hairs against pale skin looking bare and animal. He looks like a man. He’s smiling. The fact that he’s a naked animal doesn’t seem to bother him at all. He props himself up on his elbow, turns to me. “Hey, Tess,” he says, his eyes a mixture of sweet and amused. I feel tender and shaky, like all of me is on the outside. “Hey,” I say.

He drags one finger down my side. “You feel okay?”

“Yeah,” I tell him.

“It didn’t hurt too much?”

I shake my head no.

Right at the doorstep of doing it, he said, This is your first time, right? You didn’t tell me but I know. Like him knowing in the van that I had a big fight with my mom. Like him knowing what music I would like without me saying, before I even knew myself. My mom is always telling me I’ll understand things when I have more life experience, and I’ve always thought that was kind of a crock, but now I know what she means. Colin has life experience; it makes him know things before you tell him. It makes him know me better than I know myself. Maybe that’s what they mean when they say “wise.”

He said, This might hurt a little, and it did, but I didn’t flinch. My eyes welled up but I squeezed them shut, and anyway his face was over my shoulder by then, pressed into the pillow, in his own world. The hurt bled into the whole of it, him moving over me, closer than I’d ever been to anyone, closer than I’d ever even been to myself. I thought I might crack open, but I just hung on, memorizing the smell of the skin of his neck, and when it stopped hurting enough to open my eyes, I counted the million freckles sprawling out across his shoulders, each one a tiny miracle.

“Do you feel different?” he asks, and I don’t know how to do anything but tell the truth.

“Not really.”

There’s a pause.

“Is that weird?” I ask.

“That’s not weird,” he says, and cracks that grin again.

“Good,” I say. “I was worried it was weird.” When I hear it come out of my mouth I realize how funny it is to worry things are weird when you’re with another person who’s not hiding even a little tiny part of himself. And I realize that’s the whole point: to be together and not hiding any parts. No secrets. Nothing held back. That’s the whole entire point. The shaky feeling melts away and suddenly I do feel different.

We lie in bed forever, talking, and when we finally start to get restless he lends me his sweater to go outside. I watch him get dressed, cross the room without his shirt on, dig through laundry for his clothes. His sides slant toward his waist in a V, sloped in from his strong shoulders, and I think:That’s what a man looks like. He pulls on a flannel and jeans, and when we walk onto the stoop, the sky’s already pink. Winter’s close, I guess, and night comes early, but still, I can’t believe the whole day just swallowed itself inside his room. It makes my body feel confused, like when you lie down for a nap in sunlight and wake up when it’s dark. The air smells cold; his hand’s warm around mine. “Wanna see the creek before we head back?” Now that I saw how dark it is, I’m getting anxious, but I say, “Sure,” and remind myself nobody’s going to notice that I’m gone.

Light floods out through the windows of Main Building, all the ashram people laughing through the glass. You can’t hear what they’re saying, but you can see them in there like a diorama, their own little enclosed world. I used to walk by other people’s houses, right at dusk and after, when my mom was out on dates. One by one I’d peek in all the windows, see a tiny universe in every home, like dollhouses but real. Sometimes there’d be an old guy having a TV dinner, but mostly it was families clustered up in twos and threes and fives, boxed in by four safe walls, everybody home. I’d watch them from outside, wishing that one of those worlds would hold my mom and dad and me, TV on while we ate meat loaf, cleared the table, got some milk. Our apartment always seemed too empty when I went home afterward, dark even when I turned on all the lamps.

I sit with Colin in the van, dim light above the windshield circling us in our own private glow. And I realize: This van is my world. My light. I’m not outside anymore; I’m one of the people that I used to watch.

Colin kisses me good night.

“You’re beautiful, Tessa,” he says, and I believe him.