WHERE SHE WENT FROM HERE
Carol looked at her clothing in neat piles next to the open backpack and thought maybe this morning she’d put the clothes in the bag, zip it up, and carry the bag over her shoulder to the street below. She’d climb down the hill, balancing herself as she stepped over rocks and logs, and eventually stand under the concrete shelter where she’d wait for the bus. She thought of her mother, as she did most mornings, and pictured her pulling a brush through her cropped silver hair, winking at her reflection in the mirror, a subtle nod at her readiness to tackle the day. Carol hadn’t spoken with her mother in over a year.
Her single room was spare. She had a foam mattress over a concrete slab. This was her bed. She also had a small desk made of wood and a plastic chair next to it, which she rarely sat on. There were some shelves built into the wall, where she kept her clothes, candles, books, flashlight, and jars of peanut butter. There was no electricity, so she had no lamps. When she had first arrived, almost a year ago, she had had a radio with a tape player, but batteries were expensive and some of the other boarders had complained about the noise.
There were ten boarders who lived in the female wing. Against the lavender mornings, Carol watched her neighbors walk slowly over the dirt paths, pushing heels into the dust and rolling down the balls of their feet slowly to their toes. Then a pause and the next foot lifted. It was called mindful walking—a form of meditation. Some of the boarders had been at the meditation site for several years, while others had only just arrived and would leave as quickly and quietly as they came. Carol felt comfortably distant from the gentle movement around her, covered by the shadows of the beginning day. She saw herself removed from both groups of boarders: certainly not a tourist, brushing quickly against guidebook suggestions, and not one of these long termers whose lives seemed slashed from their past and their future.
The meditation site was located at the outskirts of the hill station, Kandy, in central Sri Lanka. When Carol had arrived in Colombo over a year ago, she was thirty-four years old, tired from living with a mother who she felt had aged her ten years. Although she knew this wasn’t true.
On Carol’s third day in Colombo, she had made up her mind to travel out of the city’s steaminess. In her Lonely Planet guidebook, Carol had folded over pages of the southern coast. The glossy reflection of the turquoise sea looked like an oil slick across the page. The cave temple at Dambulla seemed to possess a haunted dimness, where Carol imagined echoes would carry the sounds of ancient breaths. She had closed her eyes in her hotel room, projecting herself into these photographs, willing herself to feel the excitement of discovery and newness. Instead she had felt a sense of purposelessness. How was aimless wandering different in an unfamiliar land from aimless wandering at home?
At the central rail station, a young woman had stood next to Carol in line. She had blond hair piled into a ponytail of tangled braids. She smelled of patchouli oil and sweat and there were dark stains under the arms of her yellow patchwork dress. She surprised Carol by introducing herself. Lena, an American. Her skin was tanned in a cracked sort of way, dry and dusty. Her eyes were flashes of blue gray under long lashes. When Carol told her where she planned to travel—the beaches of Hikkaduwa for a start—Lena cut her off. “Don’t go to the beach, Carol. Not today. Come with me to the hill country. Trust me—I’ve worked here for three years, and I’m finally taking a vacation. You can always go swimming and sip pineapple drinks later.” Without waiting for a reply, Lena moved to the ticket window and asked for two one-way tickets to Kandy. She spoke to the clerk in Sinhala. He looked annoyed and answered her in English. Three hundred and fifty rupees. Carol followed Lena through the crowds on the platform, where Lena found a post to squat against, frog-like, her weight balanced easily over her feet. Carol still had her finger planted in her guidebook, where she felt for the glossy image of palm trees. She resented Lena’s suddenly taking charge, her aggressive friendliness. She had grown too accustomed to letting other people make decisions for her. And even here, where she had firmly chosen solitude and independence, Lena had arrived to trample her will. Carol tried to make her voice sound exasperated: “Where are we going exactly?”
“There’s a meditation site up in the mountains. My boyfriend is there and says it’s much cooler in the hills during the summer, compared to the rest of the country. There’s even been some rain.”
Carol thought, Of course there’s a boyfriend, and she suddenly felt angry. She should have gone off to Hikkaduwa on her own. But here was Lena with two tickets and her grinning forcefulness, and she had already flung Carol’s bag over her shoulder as the northbound train approached.
The train ride took eight hours. She and Lena had been pushed into the very back of a second-class car, wedged between two families. The toilet was half-hidden behind a broken door, and the air smelled damply of urine and hot skin. Carol raised a handkerchief to her mouth and nose and concentrated on not throwing up. Lena suggested that she try to bring her mind someplace else. “Try to ignore the present,” she said.
So Carol thought of her room in her mother’s house, where she had been living for the past year and a half. Her room was decorated as it had been when she was in eighth grade. The furniture was glazed wicker, sort of putty-colored. Everything else was peach and turquoise, as if it were modeled on some Florida hotel room. Her mother had picked out the furnishings. Carol’s childhood doll collection lined the dresser and desk, nightstand and shelves: there was the Dutch doll dressed in apron and clogs, a French peasant doll, a Russian czarist-era doll with a fur hat, and a Southern plantation doll wearing a brooch and a pin-striped blouse. The dolls were made by the same company and had identical faces, as if they were sisters separated only by fashion. In this room, Carol felt oppressed and restless. Each detail from her childhood was a scolding reminder that she had somehow failed to become a grown-up. As her mother clattered pots and pans downstairs in the kitchen, Carol dreamed of escape. A teaching job in Paris. A traverse up Machu Picchu. Finding an unknown exotic geography that would prop her up and would make others use words like “adventurous,” “brave,” and “strong” to describe her.
But rather than escape, Carol took a job as a librarian in her childhood town in western Massachusetts. She had moved into her old room—temporarily, she had promised her mother and herself—after she began divorce proceedings from her husband. They were both grad students; he was studying philosophy and Carol was studying English literature. He had asked Carol to marry him when they thought she was pregnant. Carol’s mother had cautioned against the marriage, telling her that it would be a lonely one. Her mother was a tall woman who moved quickly through her house and often talked to Carol with her back turned. She had been this way since Carol’s father left her, all brisk action and flurried purposefulness.
“You speaking from experience, Mom?”
“I’m speaking as someone who might know more than you.” She brushed past Carol then, knocking shoulders with her daughter. The slight violence of the gesture was a physical warning. Don’t challenge me, it suggested, followed by a dismissal. “Hand me that saucepan, darling. The book girls are coming over and I haven’t even started dinner.”
Carol placed the pan on the counter, a few inches from her mother’s outstretched hand. I don’t have to be swallowed up by her predictions, Carol thought to herself as she left the kitchen.
Three weeks later, Carol had gotten her period, and while she was still stunned by the surprise and relief, her husband had said, “Why don’t we get married anyway?” And because she couldn’t remember what it felt like to be apart from him, she whispered yes, okay, although she worried that he was only trying to make her feel better, reassure her that the proposal hadn’t only been born of necessity and panic. Carol let her mother believe that the wedding was still linked to the pregnancy. She liked the idea of manipulating her mother’s perception of things, of governing her mother’s ignorance. When the time was right, Carol would say, You se
e, Mom. You were wrong. It’s not always the way you say it will be.
A few months later, Carol was researching Yeats in the campus library. She had climbed a staircase to the fourth-floor stacks, and while she squinted over the titles, she heard whispering and laughing. Carol smiled as the voices grew silent. She imagined kissing and hair being stroked. When she rounded the next stacks, there he was, her husband, holding hands with a girl with two braids in her hair. When he looked at Carol and called her name, she turned away quickly and said, “Not now. Not here.” When her husband returned to their apartment late that night, he simply said, “I love her. I’m sorry, Carol.”
Although her husband offered to move out, Carol packed her bags and took the car to her mother’s. She left the pots and pans, their computer, and, mistakenly, her grandmother’s quilt, but she took her books and a framed poster of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
“I don’t see why you have to drop out of school,” her mother said as she stood in the doorway of Carol’s bedroom.
“Just can’t concentrate right now, Mom.” Carol spread her clothes out neatly into her wicker drawers.
Though her mother stood silently, Carol listened for the monologue playing inside her mother’s head. What a waste. Pity to give up your scholarship. I knew he was no good, and I tried to warn you. Carol knew what the upcoming weeks held for her. Her mother would try to set her up on blind dates. A radiologist from the hospital who would smell of soap and cologne. Her best friend’s son, a graphic designer who would use words like “aesthetic” and “paradigm.” There’s no need for moping around, would be the repeated counsel.
Carol slammed her suitcase shut. “Mom, can you not stand there hovering?” She began to tear at the boxes of books on her floor, the removal of the packing tape a shrill interruption to their silence.
After a sigh and a quick tap of her fingernail against the doorframe, her mother turned to go down the hall. “I’ll go make us some tea. Come down when you’re ready.”
Her mother always did this—decided when a conversation had reached its end. Carol was familiar with this tension; their relationship had become strained after her father left when she was still in high school. After her parents’ separation, her mother began to move around the house faster, more frantically, and her voice became louder, as if she were trying to fill the space of two. She went back to nursing school and was suddenly full of advice and aggressive suggestion. “You should really keep some ice on that knee. I think you might like taking physiology rather than physics. Why don’t you try cutting your hair short? You’re always hiding behind all that hair.” The house bustled with book clubs and dinner gatherings, her mother happily pouring wine and lighting candles and sitting people in their proper places. Carol watched all this activity from a distance, disconcerted by her mother’s frenzied movements. While her mother threw herself into extroverted action, hostessing and surrounding herself with noise and bustle, Carol chose the comfort of the shadows in the house, the landscape of books, where she could observe and judge from a quiet distance.
CAROL AND LENA arrived in Kandy in the middle of the afternoon. A soft mist blanketed the town. Lena reached for the watch on Carol’s left wrist. “We missed the last bus, so we’ll have to walk.”
The meditation center was on top of a small mountain. It took about two hours to walk from the town to the site, first along a paved road, then dirt, then along a footpath that switchbacked for about a mile or so. The path was immersed in forest, and Carol thought how the landscape resembled the Berkshires. Lena hiked easily in her flip-flops, while Carol’s sneakers dug into her heels, and her thighs rubbed painfully under her long skirt. She was faintly disgusted by the bulge of her stomach over the skirt’s elastic band.
A Sri Lankan man wearing a yellow sarong met them at the top of the mountain. Lena greeted him in Sinhala, but he laughed and said hello with a British accent. Carol was slightly embarrassed for Lena, but Lena just cocked her head to the side and pulled her ponytail tighter. The man explained that they could share a room for two rupees a night, but they were expected to help with the cooking at least twice a week, and they would be responsible for cleaning the bathing well and toilets every day. Conversation was permitted between three and five o’clock every afternoon and during discussion hours from eight to ten at night. Otherwise they were expected to remain “in silence.” He handed them a meditation schedule, two foam mattresses, two sheets, and six candles.
“Godwin will want you to introduce yourselves to him. The women’s boarding area is beneath the meetinghouse.” The man pointed vaguely up the path. “And the men stay beyond the dining hall.”
Carol and Lena began walking in the direction of his gesture. “I feel like I’m at summer camp,” Lena whispered.
“Me, too,” Carol answered, although she didn’t feel that way at all. The place was much too quiet, and Carol was already thinking of escape. Would she be able to find her way back down the mountain and then back to Kandy? She retraced the day’s journey in her mind and felt suddenly trapped in someone else’s decision. Carol tried to shake off her fatigue and irritation. In a day or two, I’ll just ask her. Ask her to show me the way back to Kandy, she thought.
Lena and Carol shared a large room with two bed slabs and desks. Lena threw her backpack onto the far concrete platform. “I’m going to wander a bit, try to find Paul.”
Carol unfolded her sheet over the dented foam mattress. She spread out her body and wondered how she had gotten to this place and if she would start to feel lonely soon. When she first told her mother about her plans to travel to Sri Lanka, her mother warned her that she would feel isolated, that the solitude would make her dwell on her mistakes. When her mother had asked, Why Sri Lanka? Carol had answered that she wanted something new. She wanted to go to a place she had never seen before, a place that would challenge her—somewhere people have to look at a map to locate, somewhere with a civil war that newspapers mentioned every once in a while.
“I’m getting older, Mom, and I don’t understand myself at all. I work at a library where everything is quiet all day. I come home and read or watch TV. I cringe when the phone rings and hope it’s not for me. I never feel like talking to anybody. I have no idea what I want.” What Carol didn’t say was that she liked the idea of being lonely—lonely on her own terms, not lonely because her life had somehow become lonely.
“I never understand these decisions you make.” Her mother ran her hand through Carol’s hair, tucking a few strands behind her ear. “What do you need a challenge for?” Her mother’s hand in her hair made Carol feel young and bullied.
WHEN CAROL INTRODUCED herself to Godwin, he took her hands gently in his and pushed her palms into a position of prayer. He stood very close to Carol, and she could see the crinkled lines around his eyes and tiny beads of sweat gathering at his temples. His breath felt dry and smelled of bananas. “Welcome,” he said.
Carol surprised herself by blushing. “Thank you,” she answered.
In Godwin’s cabin there were posters of famous cricket players on the wall.
“I love cricket,” he explained, following Carol’s gaze. “Here, come.” Carol followed him into the hut. He had a small platform bed raised slightly off the floor. There were small books in neat stacks against the wall and dirty teacups on a small table. He stood behind Carol and rested his hands on her shoulders. “This is Rashim de Silva, a wonderful bowler, and here is Vikram Jayawardena. He averages at least three sixes for every over. Do you know anything about cricket?”
“No. Just that it’s something like baseball.” The room was hot and Godwin’s hands were warm on Carol’s shoulders. She wondered if he could smell the sweat coming off her body.
“Oh, it’s a wonderful game, really. I played quite a bit when I was younger. Whenever I travel, I stick to countries with cricket teams. I’ve been to stadiums in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and England, of course.”
“You’ve been to all those
countries?”
“Yes. For me, travel encourages meditation. It takes me out of the familiar and into my mind, into my response to the difference and the sameness around me.”
Godwin brought the conversation back to Carol. “Tell me about your meditation history.”
“Meditation history? I don’t have one.”
“So, you’re a beginner.” Godwin smiled, exposing a mouth of overcrowded teeth. “Good, good.” Godwin placed his hand around her bare arm and guided her into a chair. As Carol sat, he continued to stand, rubbing his palms together. His hands were enormous—long and flat. “I’m not going to teach you how to meditate. You should find your own way into it. My only suggestion is to pace yourself. If your legs hurt sitting cross-legged, stretch them out. If you want to stand or walk rather than sit, go ahead. But it shouldn’t be comfortable either. If you have questions, come to see me. I’ll expect you once a week.”
As Carol left Godwin’s cabin, she felt like laughing. What was she doing here? She wasn’t a religious person; she had certainly never considered herself spiritual.
She wandered to the library—a small wood hut adjacent to the meditation hall. She sat on a cushion and read a book called A Buddhist Beginner’s Guide to Meditation. The book smelled of mold and the pages made crackling sounds when Carol turned them. Someone had written notes in the margins, offering advice to future readers. “Remember your breathing. Count until you forget you’re counting. Make your mind a blank page.”
Soon Carol smelled coconut oil frying, and she headed toward the kitchen. Lena and a man were sitting on one of the benches outside the dining hall. “Watchya reading?” Lena asked.
The Beach at Galle Road Page 10
