TWENTY-ONE

. . .

The question: How do you get there from here? The answer: You go around and then you come back.

We hike up, my arm on his shoulders, till we get to a bend in the creek that’s narrow enough to cross. I wait by the van while he goes and gets me clothes, and I change outside when he comes back. I don’t want to see Clint and Bennett.

My ankle’s dulled to a low throb, but I can feel there’s something very wrong. I brace myself against Colin’s bus to change, wince hard when I lean on my bad foot. Colin’s cords slip off my hips, but I roll the waistband, tuck his flannel in the back to hold them up. His clothes are big enough for me to drown in and I’m glad; hidden in the folds, my body finally feels safe.

“What time is it?” I ask him.

“Five thirty,” he says. “It’s been fifteen hours. You should be down by now.”

“I’m not,” I say. The world is still too clear, my thoughts too big; everything’s still flooding in too fast.

His eyes dart at me. “Really?”

“Yeah, I’m still tripping. Is that weird?”

He pauses. “No,” he says, not looking at me. “No, it’s not weird.”

I don’t believe him. But I don’t want to ask him any more.

In the bus, I check out my ankle. It’s purple and huge, like a rotten fruit. The fragility of my body overwhelms me; a wave of nausea passes through. I flinch and look away. Out the window everything is spinning. It’s a kaleidoscope: there’s no solid place to look, the world spilling in an endless tilting circle. My head is spinning too. Space has turned to time, expansiveness to speed, and things are moving way too fast. My tether snapped; he let me go and I slid off to someplace not safe. There is nobody to catch me. Not Colin, not my mother, not my father. There’s no one left; just me. I’m too exposed. Clint and Bennett, even Colin: they all crowd me out and make me naked, roll me over, bare my belly, then act like I did something wrong. I don’t know what I did, what I’m doing, how to roll back over and protect myself, and Colin isn’t talking.

Just go home, I tell myself. Just sneak into your bed and close your eyes and crawl between the sheets. Alone and quiet I can piece myself together; the world will slow to steady and I’ll find solid ground again. I tell myself later Colin and I will talk and he’ll hold me, arms around me like a blanket, warm and soft, and it’ll be like the beginning, when I fell into him beneath his favorite tree and it was safe. I’m not sure it’s true, but I tell myself, Believe it. Because otherwise I’m going to panic and dissolve.

We zip past Atma Lakshmi, toward the front. “What are you doing?” I ask him.

“Well, you can’t walk,” he says, like it’s my fault. “How’re you gonna get there unless I take you all the way?”

“I don’t know,” I say, ashamed to need his help.

The nearer we get, the faster my heart thuds. This is too close, the main entrance in broad daylight, right at the end of morning meditation. Just breathe, I tell myself. Breathe and make yourself invisible. If you’re small enough they won’t see you.

When we pull around the corner I see that that’s impossible. There’s a crowd out front: a big one. I can feel them buzz from here. My heart goes high up in my throat; adrenaline floods my veins.

Then I see through the people—there are cop cars. Two of them. My blood goes still and the tense floods out of me, but I don’t relax. I’m like an animal—hunting or hunted—every nerve on alert, yet stiller than I’ve ever been.

Someone yells, “Hey!” and points, and it’s too late to turn around. I look at Colin. He looks at me. Time stretches out.

“Shit,” he says, and puts the bus in park.

They swarm up, Ninyassa and Vrishti and a bunch of people I half recognize. Not my mom, though. My mom’s not there. The cops go around to Colin’s side. They’re in uniform and everything, two of them. They open his door hard; one of them grabs him by the shirt. “Come with us,” they say, and I see fear flicker through Colin’s eyes.

“Wait,” I tell them. “What did he do?” I’ve never talked to a cop before, haven’t even seen one except on TV or pulling someone over on the highway. But I know

Colin can’t argue with them, so I have to stop them from taking him away. The fat cop peers at me. “I think you know what he did, young lady.” He says it like a warning. “No, I don’t—” even though I kind of do. He cuts me off. “Robbery, trespassing, corrupting a minor, statutory—” Colin looks at the steering wheel. “Fuck,” he says quietly. Then he turns to me, slow. “Tessa, let me go.”

Tears are streaming down my face and I’m still tripping. “No,” I scream at the police, like it could stop them. “You can’t. You can’t do that.”

“Oh, yes we can,” the tall cop says. “And you better watch it, kiddo, because we’re gonna be talking with you next about that statue.”

I grab Colin’s arm and hang on hard enough to hurt him. My nails dig into his skin. I can’t let him go. Something is ripping in two parts inside my ribs, like velcro but made of flesh and blood, and it hurts more than anything I’ve ever felt. Let him go. I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t. “I love you, Tess,” he says to me, and his arm yanks past my grip, and they pull him out of the bus and toward their car.

This is like a horror movie, the worst thing I can imagine actually becoming real before my eyes. The only way it could be worse is if they took me away too.

And then the door on my side opens and Ninyassa and Vrishti grab my arms.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Vrishti yells at me in front of everybody. I stumble, trying to stay off my bad foot. Vrishti’s pretty face isn’t pretty anymore, curdled with anger, bright pink against the orange of her hair. “I saw you. I saw you steal that statue. I know everything.” Everyone is staring. Ninyassa stands there with her arms crossed.

My head is spinning. Everyone’s faces are distorted, like a fun-house mirror or a freak show; pain throbs up my leg. People buzz and ogle me like a car wreck.

Vrishti goes on. “I know everything.” She gives me a gross, knowing look. “I talked to Devanand.” My eyes go wide. “Yes, I did, and I know what you were doing with that—man. And let me tell you, if you think the Guru’s going to stay with someone whose daughter acts like that, you’ve got another thing coming.” All of a sudden she’s off on some hysterical tangent about the Guru and his “companion,” ranting and raving. She’s so mad it’s like she’s crazy. “He has standards, you know. And you can bet when he finds out about all this he’ll be done with both of you. He wants companionship that’s ethical and pure. Not a family of whores. And betrayers,” she says through tears. “And liars. That’s what you are. Liars.” She’s crying hard now; her voice is acid, full of hate. She called me a whore. She’s talking about my mother. I want to shrink into the sidewalk.

“Where’s my mom?” I squeak out. “Probably up at Guru’s quarters whoring around like her daughter. Runs in the family, you know,” Vrishti yells, freaking out, and then Ninyassa’s arm’s around my back.

“You’re coming with me,” she says, stern, and leads me through the entrance.

She marches me through the lobby, limping, everyone staring, and then around behind the desk. “Where are we going?” I ask her, and she doesn’t answer.

My mind whirs, trying to make up a story to slip out of this and save myself. I don’t know what people know and what they don’t, who told what to whom; some things I can’t explain away. Devanand knows we were kissing. Meer and Sanjit caught me leaving in the van. Vrishti saw us steal the statue, and everybody knows that I was gone all night. I try to put something together that includes it all, but my thoughts sprawl in a million different directions, refuse to weave together into a single thread. And underneath, that black oil creeps in at the corners when I think about the Guru and my mom.

Ninyassa takes me to the tiny room behind the front desk, fluorescent lights and a table and a hard plastic chair. All my stuff is on the table; my weed and pipe unwrapped from their sock and scarf and handkerchief and laid out there, spread out with all the other things that matter. My Walkman, the mix that Colin made me, all my tapes. Green Tea Experience is there. And next to them is my mom’s journal.

Ninyassa sits me in the plastic chair. My butt bones ache. My ankle is in agony. “Where’s my mom?” I ask again.

“I don’t know,” Ninyassa says. “The police are on their way to talk to you,” and leaves me there.

I stare at the wood-paneled walls for I don’t know how long. The grain swims. I’m still tripping. It’s supposed to last twelve hours; it’s been almost sixteen now. I let those guys tell me it was just an urban legend: you couldn’t drop too much and not come back. But what if they were wrong? What if that guy who tripped forever does exist—and he turns out to be me? I start to mourn my mind. I loved my mind. I loved how it listened to music and thought about things, how it could be quiet and rest. I miss the mundane of breakfast and brushing my teeth, sneakers and small things and engine parts. Now I’ll never get it back.

I think about taking my weed from the table, slipping it in my pocket or the trash so the cops can’t see. But they’ll see. They know. Ninyassa knows. There’s no getting out of this. I’m going to go to jail, on acid. I cannot believe this is my life.

My mom’s journal is sitting there staring at me. I know I shouldn’t pick it up. The cops could come in, or Ninyassa, catch me reading, fingers in the pages like a cookie jar. But I’m already tripping forever, and I’m already going to get arrested. My life is over anyway.

Fuck it. What more can they do to me? I pick it up.

The pages are rice paper, her handwriting like calligraphy or lace. I thumb through it, looking. It’s the inside of my mother’s mind. The place I’ve spent the last six months trying to find.

It starts with things I’ve heard about: the liquid silence ocean, electricity and light. How glad she is to have finally found her people. That this is what she’s been looking for, all this time, since she was just nineteen. That she’s finally free. Then it says I can tell Tessa doesn’t like it here. It says I don’t know how to make it better. I don’t know how to make her understand. Then it says I’m so goddamn pissed at her. All I want to do is open up my heart, and she keeps rejecting everything. I want to make her happy, but not at the expense of my own fulfillment, and it makes me so mad that she keeps making me have to choose. How can I even be a good mom if I’m not happy? And then, later, it says I think the Guru wants for me to be his love. This is more intense than anything I’ve ever known. I’m scared of it. I’m worried that it’s wrong. But I can’t give up this opportunity; I know that it’s the courageous thing to do.

She’s been having sex with him for months.

I feel dirty reading it, wrong and gross. It’s way too much information, so much more than hearing about all her dates and lumberyard guys back in Ohio. But I can’t stop. This is what she’s been keeping from me; this is why she’s gone. She talks about giving up her power, surrendering and how it scares her, how she has to force herself past the fear, give up, give in, demolish her ego till the person that she thought she was is gone. That she has to be ruthless in destroying her desires and fears. That even though their relationship is perfect in the eyes of God, that no earthly soul can ever ever know. And she says that he’s her soul mate. That this is what she’s been really looking for for fifteen years; she’s traveled and traveled only to land at his feet. And that now that she’s finally found him, she can never leave.

My heart cracks. She can never leave.

She’s gone, spiraled into some place I don’t ever want to be, a universe that terrifies me, full of orders and obedience, power and surrender, destruction of who you are and what you want and everyone you love. I think about what happened in the temple, how her self just all drained out of her, and I want it back. I want her back. She’s never coming back.

The doorknob clicks; I wipe my eyes and brace myself for cops.

But then it opens and it’s her.

Her eyes turn into saucers and she runs to me. Life floods back through her like a dying plant in a rainstorm. “Tessa!” she yells, and lifts me from the chair. She squeezes so hard I can’t breathe, and all her bones poke into me. She’s so so thin, but she hangs on to me as strong as iron. She buries her face in my hair, breathes in deep. “Oh, Tessa,” she says. “I was so scared you were gone.”

“I wasn’t gone,” I say, even though I sort of was. And then I can’t say any more because I’m crying, hard, and so is she, shoulders wet with both our tears. I can’t tell what’s her and what’s me, and it scares me, but it also feels safe, safer than anything I’ve felt in too long. “I wasn’t gone,” I say again, thanking god she noticed I was missing.

We stay like that a long time, till there’s a knock on the door and Ninyassa comes in. My mom pulls away from me like taffy. She doesn’t even hold on to my hand. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

“Well,” Ninyassa says, looking at the two of us. “Well, well.” And suddenly I feel like my mom’s in trouble too.

“So we’ll have to talk,” Ninyassa says. .

“I just have to tell you—” my mom starts in.

Ninyassa cuts her off. “I have to say a few things first.”

I look at my mom sideways. She’s staring at the floor.

“There have been some serious transgressions here,” Ninyassa says, eyes ping-ponging between us. “To the point of the criminal. On multiple fronts.”

The room’s so quiet you can hear fluorescents buzz.

“There are rules, you know. These transgressions have to be addressed,” Ninyassa goes on. She turns to me. “Tessa,” she says.

I face my mom, try one more time. Please have my back. Don’t make me talk to her alone. But she keeps her hands in her lap and her eyes on the wall.

“Tessa,” Ninyassa goes on, “it’s come to my attention you’ve been carrying on an illicit—relationship with a young man who is not only not a part of our community, but who is an adult, thereby making that relationship not only immoral, but illegal. You’ve been dishonest with Devanand for several months, abandoning your seva and your responsibilities to the community, and you’ve abetted trespassing by encouraging this young man to sneak into your room at night.” My mother shoots a look at me. “This is not to even begin the discussion of the robbery of the statue, or your use of drugs on ashram premises. As I’m sure you know, these actions of yours carry serious consequences.” My cheeks burn. I want to say, Quit rubbing it in, but that would be a bad idea. My mouth stays shut. Ninyassa turns to my mom.

“Now, I believe you share responsibility for this, Guhahita,” she says. “As you know, we have a firm policy that ashram guests are responsible for the actions of their children. On both the literal and metaphorical levels. And I believe Tessa’s actions would not have gone unaddressed for so long were you not engaging in unethical, dishonest behavior of your own.”

“Ninyassa, I just have to say—”

“I’m not finished.” Ninyassa stares her down. “Despite all that, this ashram exists as a place of service to the Guru. We follow his infinite wisdom here, even when it seems mysterious to our own more limited minds. And he has been consulted, and he has come to the conclusion that under no circumstances are you to be disciplined, Guhahita, for your personal breach of ethics, unless you choose to compound that breach of ethics by discussing it publicly.” She pauses. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Look, Ninyassa, I’m not sure—”

“Do you understand what I’m saying.” It’s a statement, not a question.

“I—think so,” my mom says, trying to read her eyes.

“Not only are you asked to stay, but you may maintain your”—pause—“position, with the understanding that you will exercise immaculate discretion, advising your fellow devotees that to believe in rumors of illicit activities on the part of our beloved Guru is to strengthen the illusions of the mind.”

My mom looks like she swallowed something rotten. Ninyassa turns to me.

“Now, Tessa. About the robbery, and other crimes.”

Jesus Christ. Does she have to keep saying crimes?

“Assuming your mother abides by the agreement I’ve just mentioned, and you as well, the Guru will refrain from pressing charges. However, you’ll have to tell us where the statue is.”

I’m confused. “What does that m—”

“That means you won’t have to deal with the police.”

Oh. Wow. No jail. And all I have to do is tell her where it is? A ten-ton weight lifts off my shoulders. “It’s at Dee’s Cottages,” I blurt out. “In the yard.” Secretly I hope that Clint and Bennett are still there, and that the cops will find them too.

“Good,” Ninyassa says, clipped. “The police are currently holding the—young man. Since we’re agreed on all the other issues, the ashram won’t be pressing charges against him for the robbery. You can discuss among yourselves whether you will choose to press charges in the areas of corrupting a minor and statutory rape. That choice is, of course, ultimately up to you,

Guhahita, as you are the parent here, and thus, the legal guardian.” Ninyassa stares her down for a second, like she doesn’t think my mom deserves to be my legal guardian. At this point, I kind of agree.

My mom doesn’t say anything. Ninyassa points at her, like giving an order. “But if you do decide on pressing charges, remember: ultimate discretion.”

And then she turns and leaves.

My mom looks at the ground. Not at me. Even after all of this, she still won’t look at me. She seems so miserable, like the night before we came here when she sobbed into her Lemon Zinger tea and said how men would always let you down. Except now she looks way worse.

I don’t know why she feels so bad; she just got everything she wants. We got out of trouble. She gets to stay here with her precious fucking soul mate, be obedient and keep it all a secret, and everything will be just exactly how it was for her, and I’ll be stuck here all alone with everybody watching me and judging me and knowing everything I’ve done.

I’m glad I don’t have to go to jail, but I’m not sure if this is that much different.

I don’t have anything to lose. She’s already gone. It doesn’t matter if she’s mad at me. I take a breath.

“Mom, you remember when we were on the way here, how you promised you would stay with me? Well, you didn’t. You didn’t stay with me. And you never do. You’re always leaving every place we ever are.”

“Tessa, come on, that’s not fair,” she says. “We’ve just been looking for where we finally fit in. And now we’ve found it.” She tries to make her voice soothing, like those guys in the cafeteria with Jayita, trying to calm her down. “We can stay here, Tessa. I’m not going anywhere.”

What’s left of the acid makes it so everything is clear, so I can see the things she’s doing even when she doesn’t say them. She’s just trying to get me to say okay and go along with what she wants. She’s trying to comfort me without actually giving anything up herself.

“We haven’t found anything, Mom. You found it. You never asked me if I wanted to come here. You never ask me if I want to go anywhere. You just do what you want and drag me along, and I’m just invisible, so fuck it, I don’t matter.” The force of it surprises me. “Do you know you haven’t asked me what I want since I was, like, six years old? You only talk to me about yourself, and you only do it when there’s no one else to talk to, and I don’t care if you want to spend the night with Rick or Dan or the fucking weirdo beard guy, I’m your kid, and you’re not supposed to leave me alone. And I don’t care that you never got to go on the road and be a hippie. It’s not my fault. I wasn’t even born yet. So quit fucking making me feel guilty about it.”

She looks like she’s been hit by a truck. I don’t care that I’m crying; it feels good to make her finally shut up about herself.

“And you know what, Mom? I know you hate my dad for leaving you, and I know he doesn’t want me bugging him, and maybe I do think he’s an asshole, but he’s my dad. You don’t get to decide how I’m supposed to feel about him. You don’t get to make me think the things you think. Okay? So fuck you. Just fuck you.”

Suddenly the words stop: that’s all there is. And it’s just silence. She isn’t saying anything. And it’s like the ground dissolves beneath my feet, like there’s this open space that’s bigger than anything I’ve ever felt or seen, the world broken apart like an earthquake, and I don’t know what will fall into it before it closes up again. It could be everything.

Her eyes fill up with something I don’t recognize, and I can see her think. Hard, like she’s working an equation in her head. After a long, long time she nods to herself. She found the answer.

I brace myself for a proclamation, an announcement, a new statement about her journey. For the earth to close back up and seal itself like nothing happened. I brace myself to say, Okay, even if it’s not at all, because I know there’s never any other option.

She turns to me.

“What do you want to do, Tess?”

The wind goes out of me.

She’s never asked me that question before.

She says it again. “What do you want to do?”

“You mean—what? You mean about pressing charges?”

“Well, yeah, that, but I mean . . . do you want to stay here?”

I can’t believe it. “We don’t have to?”

Her eyes fill up with tears. She shakes her head. It’s hard for her to say.

“No, Tess. We don’t have to.”

If I trust this, and then it goes away, it will be me that drops into that chasm, falling and falling till everything breaks apart. “Where—where would we go?”

“I don’t know, Tess. I don’t know.” There’s a long pause.

Then her voice goes soft. “Maybe you could tell me what you want.”

It’s weird: this is what I’ve wanted more than almost anything forever, what I’ve been asking for from some god I don’t even know if I believe in. And now that it’s here, I’m terrified. More afraid than coming here, or being left, or sneaking off with Colin; more afraid than getting caught or facing cops or staring down the Guru. More afraid than being alone. But then it pops back into my mind: Your challenge is to overcome your fear, and suddenly I can tell the difference between when you’re supposed to listen to your fear and when you’re not. This time I know for once that pushing past it is what I really am supposed to do.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”

She wants to go right up to our room and pack, but I tell her I don’t want to. And she says, “Okay, Tess, you do what you want,” and I can tell she actually means it.

I take some paper and an envelope from the room we’re in, and I go to my table by the window at the Amrit, and I start another letter. The last one.

Dear Colin.

It’s weird to write to somebody besides my dad.

I just wanted you to know that I’m not mad at you. And I’m not going to get you in any trouble. And that my mom and I are going, because I finally told her what I want, and she finally listened. Thank you for showing me how not to be afraid. I love you too.

I fold the letter into thirds and seal the envelope up. I drop it in the mailbox on the way back to our room. And for the first time it’s okay if I don’t get an answer back.

We drive straight into the sunrise. It burns our eyes, bright orange, but we don’t turn around. Cardboard boxes fill the car to overflowing and I help her see out the rear window, change lanes, keep moving forward. Neil Young is on the stereo; I picked the tape. Old man, take a look at my life, I’m a lot like you; I need someone to love me the whole day through. We don’t know where we’re going yet, but it doesn’t matter. We’ll decide. Rearview Buddhas clink in open-window air and I hold my mom’s hand on the gearshift, our hair whipping in our faces as we speed down empty open highway, two gypsies finally about to land.