EIGHT

. . .

The material world is but a creation of our consciousness, composed of the stories we tell and are told.

I can see through the trees to sky as I walk toward the parking lot; they look thinner in the daytime, less dense. I rub my lips together and blot my mouth on my hand, worrying I put on too much of her lipstick this morning. I wipe the extra red off on my jeans.

I’m almost to the lot when I spot the beard, and then the T-shirt. RUNNERS ARE SMILERS. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Devanand, unless you count Colin’s impersonations. He’s wearing jogging shorts as small as underwear, even though it’s fifty degrees. He strides right up and puts his skinny chest too close to my face.

“Where are you headed, m’lady?”

I just look up at him. I haven’t done any seva in a week. Longer, probably.

“It’s getting pretty close to frost; you must’ve finished planting those asters by now, huh?” He holds his crazy eyeballs on me for a second.

“Yeah, uh—” I stutter, then trail off. I haven’t ever actually gotten in trouble before. When I think about it, I haven’t ever actually even done anything I could get in trouble for, except forget my notebook or not finish all my kale. Well, that and writing to my dad. But I’ve gotten good at keeping that a secret.

I still haven’t formed a sentence. Devanand is staring down at me, too hard. “Where’s your vest?”

My vest is crumpled in the shed, behind a bag of wood chips. I hid it there so I wouldn’t have to wear it in front of Colin like some kind of nerd badge. “Um.”

Devanand is looking at me, arms crossed, like I have all the choice in the world. Like it’s “my responsibility.” And “my karma is my own.” And I have “total freedom.” Except I have to make the choice he wants me to or else all that freedom goes away; so really I don’t have any at all.

I clear my throat, hunt between the stretched-out seconds for something to say. He shifts his weight. I’m screwed. And then, from who knows where inside my brain: “I thought I would gather some autumn leaves. As an offering. To the Guru.” And the cherry on top: “There’s a Japanese maple at the entrance to the trail.”

Pause. Then Devanand raises his frizzy red eyebrows. “Japanese maple, huh?”

“Yes, it’s beautiful. Have you seen it? It looks like shadow puppets.”

“I do know that tree. It’s a wild one!” Suddenly he’s loose-limbed and jangly again. I’ve just made a discovery: I am a good liar.

“Yup. Just perfect for the Guru.”

“Okeydokey then! Just take the leaves that have fallen to the earth already, ’kay? Wouldn’t want to interrupt the life cycle.”

“For sure,” I say. “Would you like me to include a few from you?”

Colin’s working on the throttle cable when I show up, fists full of red and orange leaves. I’m still buzzing from the lie. It was so easy. All I had to do was pretend it was the truth and it came out that way, slid from my mouth just like it was real. I didn’t even blush. It sort of changes everything, knowing I can do that. It means I really do have “total freedom,” or at least a lot more than I thought. All I have to do is tell a story.

I crouch down next to him; gravel presses up through the soles of my sneakers. “Hey.”

“Hey.” He looks over at me. My breath is still a little fast. “What’re you so excited about?”

Now I blush. “Nothing.”

He keeps looking at me. Not like Devanand, though. I’m not going to get in trouble with Colin. “Nothing, huh? I’m not sure I believe you.” He smirks.

The only person here who can guess I’m not telling the truth is the only person I wouldn’t want to lie to. “Well, okay, something.” I tell him how Devanand intercepted me, make a whole story out of it, building up the suspense. I tell how as soon as I said, “offering to the Guru,” Devanand got all reverent and enthusiastic. And how I threw in that detail about the Japanese maple, so he’d really think I’d been paying attention to the grounds.

“Smart,” Colin says, and winks at me. “You’re a smart kid.”

I blush again.

I try an experiment: I tell myself a story. I figure it worked with Devanand, maybe it’ll work with me. I tell myself I’m funny and beautiful and know how to say all the right stuff. That no one will ever want to leave me. That if I want something I can just say it; that I can find out the things I want to know.

Colin draws a diagram of the coil wiring before he starts taking it apart, so he’ll know how to put it back together later. He scribbles with a stub of pencil, slips the paper in the pocket of his jeans. “So, Colin,” I say. He looks up from the wiring. I tell myself: You know what to say. “Did you—did you always live here?”

Ech. That came out like the glasses guy in Revenge of the Nerds. I reach for the socket set, ready to give up on my storytelling experiment, get back to work. Except: he answers me.

“I grew up about an hour away.” I look at him from the corner of my eye. He seems to have missed my transformation into Revenge of the Nerds guy.

“Yeah?”

He smiles. “Yeah. Over near Narrowsburg? Delaware County. It’s lame up there, pretty much. I’ve been around here the last couple years.”

“Yeah?”

He looks at me like I’m funny, and then says, “Yeah,” again. I feel like he’s being nice to me on purpose. It makes me feel a little like a kid, but I don’t mind. “I went to SCCC—”

Somehow it’s easier to ask him what things mean than it is to ask my mom. “What’s SCCC?”

“Sullivan County Community College? It’s near here, kinda. I did a year there, and then I traveled around a little”—he says that part louder, like he’s proud—“and then a friend of mine heard about this place down here that needed a caretaker, so, you know, free rent.”

“Cool.” I nod like I know all about free rent.

“Yeah, it is, mostly,” he says. “It’s one of those old bungalow places—used to be some summer camp or something in the sixties—and the guy doesn’t want to give it up, even though no one ever goes there anymore.

He lives in Florida. So it’s just me and fifteen cabins. Could even have a swimming pool, if I felt like cleaning out the leaves.” He smiles. “But that’s a lot of work. Doesn’t seem worth it when there’s a perfectly good creek in the backyard.”

“Wow. You have your own creek?” I can’t imagine having my own house, let alone fifteen of them, let alone a creek. I can hardly even remember having my own room.

“Well, it’s not exactly mine. But close enough.”

Suddenly I have this really strong urge to go swimming. “That sounds amazing.”

“Yeah, it’s okay,” he says. “Quiet. I kinda wish I was still traveling, though.”

“Yeah.” Again: like I know all about traveling. “Where did you go?”

“Oh, me and my buddies just hitched around up north for a while. You ever been to Maine?”

“No.”

“It’s beautiful. Imagine like it is here, but with woods ten times as thick, and pine trees. And ocean. People talk funny there, though.” He does what I guess is an imitation of a Maine accent. Something about lobsters. He sounds ridiculous; I start laughing at him really hard. For a second I worry it’s mean of me, but then he starts laughing too. “Lobstah,” he says again, and then cracks up. It’s contagious; we just sit there passing it back and forth until my stomach hurts. I don’t even feel stupid when I snort.

He learned to be a mechanic from his uncle; thank god for that. The caretaking gig doesn’t pay, so he’s gotta do something part-time. Thank god for that. The last guy who fixed the shuttles at the ashram left to live on a yoga farm somewhere in California. Thank god for that too. I whisper it out loud on the way home as the sun starts to set: Thank you, god, for adding up these things so that he is here right now.

Usually when the alarm starts buzzing and beeping in the pitch-black dark I smush my head under my pillow and hide beneath the blankets till the door clicks shut and I can breathe again. But today, somehow my mother has talked me into waking up at four in the morning to go chant with her and Vrishti. She said the chant is “magical.” She also says, “It’s just about as far as you can get from those right-wing televangelists, young lady.”

I’m so tired my brain hurts. On the way, she keeps trying to talk to me and I don’t say anything; I just look at her. “Fine,” she finally says, and walks the rest of the way three paces ahead of me, without looking back.

The chant doesn’t have a tune, just a lot of really long words, lined up verse after verse. I don’t know how to pronounce them, let alone what they mean. You read them out of a little hardcover navy blue book and I don’t see what’s so opposite from the televangelists; it reminds me exactly of the hymnals at my grandparents’ Ohio church, except we’re sitting on the floor. And speaking Sanskrit.

I wonder if the problem is me. My mom told me I should be “open” to the “energy” of the chant, “silence my mind so I can hear the song within it.” Maybe if I were less closed off and noisy I would feel something besides bored and tired and backachy.

I decide to forget about trying to get the words right and see if I can “open myself up.” I don’t even know what that means, but for some reason it translates into concentrating on the middle of my chest. After a couple minutes of that I feel like I’m going to cry, or laugh, or both, which is weird because I’m not even thinking about anything. When I stop reading the words and turning the pages I can feel it more. I worry for a second that I’ll get in trouble for stopping, but then I remember that it doesn’t matter. I can always make up a story.

Colin comes into my head. It’s not like I think of him. He’s just part of the moment, which is a thing, and which includes: the feeling in my chest, the cry-and-laugh, the room we’re in, none of it divided up at all.

But then my mind realizes it feels good to remember his T-shirt and coil-wiring diagram and the back-and-forth contagious laugh between us, and that feeling of all-at-once goes away, and it’s just him there, and I don’t know where we are in the chant, and I turn the pages trying to catch up.

But I keep thinking about him. It gets me through the drone of the half hour that’s left, and it puts a little smile on my lips that must look a lot like Vrishti’s and my mom’s.

I’m still smiling when I slide my sneakers on, open the door into sunlight, when the path turns from asphalt to wood chips to gravel. I’m still smiling when I turn the corner toward the lot, eyes pointed toward the big, crisp blue sky, glad it’s morning, that there’s still so much day ahead of me. So much day to spend with him.

But then the path spills into open, and the bus is sitting there on woodblocks, engine half out, wires half clipped, bolts strewn around the tires like garbage—no tools beside it, no one beneath. I look around, quiet, wind ruffling the leaves like feathers. He’s not here. Maybe he’s just late, I tell myself. Maybe he overslept, or took too long making breakfast. Maybe he had to clean one of his cabins. I’m used to waiting. I’ll just wait.

I sit there forever, cross-legged, gravel poking my butt, and wish I brought a book. I think about doing some work on the engine, but I have no idea what. I try to trace the branches underneath the half-fallen leaves. They look like nerves, or veins. I count them, tree to tree. I’m still bored.

There’s this other thing too, a kind of antsy jump in my throat, the opposite of the one-thing-ness I felt earlier. Everything is broken up into little shards of worry, thoughts circling each other like hungry birds and swooping down to peck at me. It’s like when I was younger and my mom would leave me overnight without telling me when she’d be home. I used to comb through everything I’d done the days before, searching for the thing that I’d done wrong, that made her mad, the thing that would explain why she was gone. Now I wonder if Colin secretly did feel bad when I laughed at him for that Maine accent, or was annoyed at me for asking all those questions. If he’s bored with me, or thinks that I’m a stupid kid.

The sun gets stronger in the sky and I tell myself, That’s dumb, it’s not your fault, he likes you fine. I tell myself something must have come up, something I don’t know about; that he has a life full of things I’ve never heard of that don’t have anything to do with me. When I do that with my dad it usually makes me feel better. I just tell myself there’s just some reason I don’t know about, and then keep hoping.

But with Colin, it weirdly makes it worse. Because I realize: I don’t like thinking there are parts of Colin I don’t know about. I don’t like thinking he’s a mystery outside our parking lot, and that I don’t really know him at all. He could even have a girlfriend. Everyone keeps all these secrets from me, these places in themselves held back and separate; it’s like nobody wants me to really know them, not for real, not all the way.

I know how to tell when someone’s not coming. It’s been two hours already, almost. He’s not just late. If I go ask Devanand for a new assignment, he’ll ask what I’ve been doing all morning, and my mind’s too tired from worrying to make up something good. My mom’s at Guru’s quarters, cooking. There isn’t anybody else. The day stretches out in front of me, wide and empty, alone.

Gravel leaves its achy imprint on my thighs when I stand up. I don’t know where I’m going, but I can’t sit here anymore.

There’s a tiny opening off the edge of the lot, so small it almost isn’t there, and I duck in, branches scratching my shoulders. The path snakes through woods, behind the kitchen, plastic soy-oil vats stacked up by the Dumpsters, stainless steel equipment and old sinks. A pair of arms thrusts out the back door to throw a bucket of scraped carrots on the steaming compost heap, and I hurry by.

It’s trees again and then the First Aid trailer, rickety steps and yellowing white paint. I think of going back in there, wrapping myself in the scratchy Guatemalan blanket, turning on the radio, picking up Jayita’s book about the bliss of true universal aloneness. I wonder if I would get it now. I get up close and squint through the shades, trying to see if she’s in there, smiling up at Chakradev. I wouldn’t mind. They’re the only ashram people who have ever been nice to me. I stand for a minute, listening for Jayita’s stoner-yoga voice, but it’s just quiet. I get back on the trail.

The woods go on and on and I start to worry that I’m lost. If I am, I’ll be screwed—it’s the country here, no pay phones anywhere, and anyway we don’t even have a number for me to call. Ahead I see daylight and when I get closer, the road. Across it are falling-down houses, pale blue and yellow and tan, one with a rusted-out car in the front yard, another with a dog. The lawns in front of them are patchy, half green, half brown. I stay on my side of the street.

I remember the letter I sent to my dad, the names of the highways and routes, and for a minute I imagine his van chugging over the hill to scoop me up, take me off on tour, tell me stories that I haven’t heard. When a pickup truck whizzes by, fast and rickety, my heart jumps a little, even though I know there’s no reason in the world it would be him. It’s stupid even to think it. The pickup fades into the distance, and then there’s nothing for a long long time.

There’s no real shoulder, just a seam where road meets grass, crumbling asphalt bleeding into green and dust. I kick my feet along it, step after step. I wonder if I’m going to have to hitchhike to get back. My mom used to hitchhike some, in Big Sur when we didn’t have a car. She’d catch a ride up Highway 1, go off and meet Billy the kayaker while I stayed back in our tent. I always wondered why he didn’t just come pick her up; he had a truck. But she liked catching rides, she said, and she always came back bearing food and stories. She never hitched with me there, though, and she always told me: Never ever hitchhike. It’s dangerous and just for grown-ups. You never know who’s driving.

The dog by the tan house barks loud and I jump. It’s probably been forty-five minutes already, but I decide to walk a little longer before I stick my thumb out.

It’s two miles at least before the woods let up. On my right I spot a smooth, wide opening, grass trimmed and thick and green, white-and-purple-spotted lilies growing on the sides of it like someone planted them. My sneakers squish in the moist ground as I turn in. A big old oak with a NO TRESSPASSING sign marks the start of the path, more lilies sprouting from the tangle of its roots. Nervous, I wonder if a rich person lives here, someone with a burglar alarm, but then I see another oak tree with another sign. In rose-colored paint is a big “om” symbol inside a purple circle, flanked on either side by swans. Underneath it says THE GURU’S DWELLING.

Another ten steps in you can see the big white mansion. It reminds me of my fourth-grade field trip to the state capitol. The house is sprawling and square, and even though it’s fall, flowers spring up everywhere in perfect clumps. Allium, asters, anemone: almost the entire “A” section from my alphabetized field guide to flowers. I used to page through those pictures for hours, wondering how all those different shapes got made, so many, all of them so beautiful. Here, they sprawl out like a map of all the different kinds of perfect in the world.

I hug the side of the mansion, follow it around to the back. Behind, I find a smaller concrete building, whitewashed to match the main house. Another garden stretches out, wrapped in chicken wire, fat squash resting on dirt, the last of the tomatoes slowly reddening on the vine. A thin strand of barbed wire tracks the top of the fence, keeping out the deer; plastic tubs for trash line up by a small back door, each one with a chain and a lock. Past that—a big uncovered window.

I keep myself small, sneak close enough to peer in. Inside, the kitchen is all stainless steel, garlands of flowers crisscrossing the ceiling, just out of reach of clouds of rising steam. It’s a hive in there, sevites buzzing around, carting tubs of dirty dishes, sweet potatoes, squash; chopping stems off purple blossoms; mincing herbs. They cross paths and then clear, and I can see the stove. Stirring a big steel pot and sweating, hair tied in a blue bandanna, is my mom. Her cheeks flush pink from steam and she looks like a picture of a peasant girl in Italy a zillion years ago, or some angelic hippie on a sixties Arizona commune. She grins at someone I can’t see and her teeth flash. Then she turns back to the pot, singing to herself. I have an impulse to say, Mom! Hi! My knuckles clench up to knock on the window before I even think. But then I remember that NO TRESSPASSING sign technically refers to me, and I put my hands back in my pockets.

Past the whitewashed kitchen building is the back of the mansion. No gardens, just a row of fall crocuses along the wall, beneath leaded glass windows. Curtains hang inside, white silk and gold embroidery like a sari, almost see-through but not quite. A bird twitters on my right and I startle. I stop walking a minute, hold still. Nothing but quiet around me.

When I turn the corner I catch a flash of movement in the middle of the white. A curtain’s pulled. The window’s high up; I have to stand on tiptoe.

The room is the color of rose quartz. Everything, walls and carpet and pillows, silk-covered altars and the big soft velvet chair. The beard guy is sitting in it, dressed all in red. He’s watching TV.

I can’t believe it. One television in this whole huge ashram and it belongs to the beard guy? He’s supposed to be the purest one here, and he’s got cable. I turn to see what he’s watching. Mr. Belvedere. George and Mr. Belvedere are having an argument. I can’t hear what it’s about. Then the TV shuts off;the door to the room cracks open, and all of a sudden the beard guy’s face looks mad.

I crane my neck to see who he’s glaring at. It’s

Jayita, dressed in a beige shawl to match her skin and hair. The beard guy says something to her, some kind of command it looks like, and she nods. She looks sad. She lifts her head to say something back, pleading, it looks like, and he just shakes his head. No, I see his mouth say, sharp.

The window’s old heavy glass and I can’t hear through it, even with my ear up close. But there’s a tiny crack along the frame. If I can pry it open, I can lift the window. I find a stick and jam it between. It makes a creak. I duck down fast, heart pounding in my ears, blood rushing to my face. Shit. I imagine them stop talking and turn toward me, count the time it’d take for the Guru to get up and walk to the window to look. I wait even a little longer than that.

Slowly I stand up, back stiff from hunching, lift up to look again. They’re still arguing. They didn’t notice. I stick my finger in the gap and push. This time the window doesn’t creak, it just cracks open.

Indian accents are usually lilty, smooth, and up-and-down like music, but his is clipped and hard. “You will understand it as a test,” the Guru says. “In time. Right now, your perception is not sufficiently refined to see that this relationship is harmful, so you must trust the Guru’s guidance.”

She’s trying to make her voice sound calm, but you can hear the quavering underneath. “But aren’t we supposed to follow our hearts? I can’t just end a relationship with someone I love—”

“Ah,” he says like she’s a child, “but there are realities more powerful than the minor attachments you call love. Sometimes we must give up our desires in order to know a larger truth.” And then he pauses, and he looks down at her boobs. She doesn’t notice.

“But it just feels wrong—”

He interrupts her. “That’s enough. There is no arguing. Serious spiritual work requires sacrifice, and this place is not for anybody but the serious. So let me make it very clear to you: If you do not give up your attachment, you will have to leave.”

“Leave?” She sounds shocked, and even mad. Then she catches herself. “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand.”

“It’s not important that you understand,” he says.

“It’s important that you follow the practices laid out for you. You’ve made your own choice to commit to the path of surrender. If you diverge from that path now, you will find that it becomes strewn with obstacles beyond that which you had previously imagined.” It’s weird; it sounds like a warning.

Fear flicks across her face. Her eyes fill with questions, and it reminds me of that first night at Special Program, when I couldn’t tell the difference between the truth and the illusions of my mind, and all of a sudden everything I was sure of crumbled and I didn’t know how I was supposed to know anything at all.

“So—this is my karma?” she asks tentatively, like she’s setting one foot on an icy lake to make sure it won’t break beneath her.

He stares down at her and gives a tiny nod. “The divine consciousness is testing me?” He nods again. “Okay,” she finally says quietly. “Okay. It’s a lesson.

It always hurts to let go of your attachments.” She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself. “So you will end this—thing with Chakradev?” the beard guy asks her, his voice like a stick, poking. Her eyes fill up. “I will.” His face softens and he leans toward her. “Good,” he says. “This is good.” He reaches out to touch her face, brushes his fingers down the side of her cheek. Gravity pulls his hand down past her chin and it grazes her chest. It stays there too long. She flinches. And he says, “Go.”

I remember that night at First Aid, how Jayita lit up all sparkly when Chakradev walked into the room; how she got all sassy with Ninyassa and danced to the radio even though we weren’t supposed to. Now she looks like a different person. She slinks out the door, her body like a bent piece of grass, stepped on and limp.

When the door clicks shut, the beard guy sits up straighter in his chair. I’m mad at him, and also I’m confused. Jayita and Dev were nicer to each other than anyone else I’ve seen here. They made each other happy. Why would he want to stop that? And why would he get to decide in the first place? That seems more like a boss or a dad than a teacher. And that touch at the end—that was creepy.

Then there’s music from inside. Bells, and voices singing Sanskrit words. Four women in saris walk in, waving incense in circles. One of them is my mom. Another one is Vrishti. Behind the incense circlers, another two women, almost as beautiful but not quite, come in with platters of food heaped up and surrounded by flower blossoms. It looks gourmet.

The women bow down in front of him. All of a sudden the beard guy’s face is reassuring and warm, like a good dad playing with a toddler. The opposite of how it was with Jayita. My mom touches her head to his feet.