Miss Buddha

by Ulf Wolf

  Kristina shook her head. “No, thanks. This is fine.” Nodding at her cup.

  Melissa sat down and looked right at Kristina. “What do you want to talk about?” She said. Then added, “Ruth, I gather.”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything’s fine, I hope.”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that.”

  Melissa sat quietly, waiting for more. Sipped her coffee.

  “Do you tutor her in any subjects?” Kristina asked after considering for a while how best to put things. It wasn’t really what she wanted to ask, but at least it was headed in the right direction.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Reading? Writing? History?”

  Melissa tensed ever so slightly, all alert now, though still smiling.

  “History?”

  “Yes. Or religion.”

  “No,” said Melissa. “No, we don’t.”

  When Kristina, rather than speaking watched the steam curl and rise from the coffee-surface, Melissa said, “Why do you ask?” The obvious question.

  There was, however, no obvious, or easy answer. It was a feeling, a notion, but she was good at notions, and from years of experience had learned to trust them. But how to put it?

  Well, she might as well just say it. “She knows more about Giordano Bruno than I do.”

  :

  Their conversation had started innocently enough. Just before the holiday break, Kristina had given her children an impromptu history lecture on Rome, brought about by a stray question concerning the pope and where he lived, and what was his job anyway?

  The little lecture included a snapshot of ancient Rome, Christianity, and the centuries between then and now. There had been many popes, she told them, all with names ending in roman numerals. This surprised some of the children, who for some reason thought there had ever been just the one. And all through this, her precocious self, Ruth had sat very still, eyes clear and steady fixed on her teacher, nodding now and then as if in agreement.

  Kristina again had the little terrifying notion that this child knew more about what she was teaching then Kristina did. As if she approved of what she was hearing, ratifying veracity.

  Then, better than halfway up the centuries, Ruth raised her hand.

  “Yes, Ruth.”

  “Did they burn people?”

  “Burn people?”

  Most of the class seemed unsure of what precisely had been asked, and some, clearly, had a problem reconciling fire and people.

  “Yes,” said Ruth.

  “They don’t burn people,” said Agnes, a little offended it seemed.

  “Sure they do,” said Ruth.

  “It has happened,” said Kristina as diplomatically as possible.

  “No way,” said Agnes.

  Ruth was about to say something, but Kristina shook her head at her, and Ruth said nothing.

  “Why would they burn people?” asked Thomas.

  “When they disagree with them,” said Ruth.

  “What?” said Thomas.

  “What?” said Kristina.

  “They call them heretics,” said Ruth.

  What could she do? The child was absolutely right. They did call them heretics, and they did burn them. But how on earth would she know?

  “Yes,” she said to the whole class. “Yes, they sometimes burned those that disagreed, at the stake. And yes, they called them heretics.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Agnes, still offended at the thought.

  “Wow,” said Thomas.

  Kristina quickly drew her little discourse to a close, and managed to arrive at the present, with its current pope, just before the bell.

  As the class filed out, Kristina asked Ruth to stay.

  She did. When they were alone in the room, Kristina, by the way of a feeler said, “You must read a lot.”

  “Some,” agreed Ruth. Meant, Kristina was almost certain, as an understatement.

  “Heretics?” she said.

  “And saints,” said Ruth.

  “This,” how was she going to put this? “This interests you?”

  “I find it fascinating,” said the child.

  “What? Anything in particular?”

  “Bruno,” she said.

  “Bruno?”

  “Giordano Bruno. He was a good man. They burned him anyway.”

  Kristina had heard of him, of course, but not in any great detail. “Giordano Bruno?”

  “They kept him in the Nona Tower for years and years. Then they dragged him on top of a donkey to Campo dei Fiori, and set a match to him. Well, not a match, they didn’t have matches then.”

  Kristina was too stunned to reply for the better part of a minute. And not once did the child blink.

  Later that evening, Kristina looked him up on her Mortimer: Giordano Bruno. And yes, indeed, he had been kept in the Nona Tower for “years and years” as Ruth had put it, and yes, indeed, they had finally dragged him to the Campo dei Fiori on top of an ass, and set him alight.

  Kristina had put her Mortimer aside in a wonder bordering on chill.

  :

  “Bruno?” said Melissa.

  “You’ve heard of him,” suggested Kristina.

  “She has mentioned him.”

  “Ruth has?”

  “Yes.” Then Melissa added, “She reads a lot.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Yes,” Melissa confirmed, partially to herself, “she reads a lot.”

  “Where did she find this? In which book? History? Religion?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” said Melissa.

  “Could we ask her?”

  And here, again, Melissa Marten seemed to tense up, as if veering too closely to some internal precipice. Finally, “Sure. Why not.”

  “I don’t remember,” said Ruth looking from Kristina to her mother and back to Kristina.

  “She doesn’t remember,” said Melissa, as if translating.

  “Big book or small book? Online, perhaps?”

  “She doesn’t use the computers much.”

  “I don’t remember,” said Ruth with such finality that Kristina decided not to pursue it. Instead, she said to Melissa, watching the back of Ruth recede into the hallway, “She’s a very precocious child.”

  “I know,” said Melissa.

  “Have you had her tested?”

  “Tested for what?”

  “IQ, aptitude. I’d wager she’d score well.”

  “I’d wager the same,” said Melissa.

  “So, you haven’t?”

  “No.”

  “Would you consider it?”

  Melissa took another sip, and considered the cup for a while, then her hands, then the rain outside. “Why?” she finally said.

  “I have taught children her age for many years, Mrs. Marten, and I have never come across anyone like her.”

  “Melissa, please,” said Melissa.

  “Thank you, of course. And please call me Kristina.”

  Melissa nodded and smiled softly. Then asked again, “But why have her tested? What difference would it make?”

  “I think she might be a prodigy. I really do. Bright does not even begin to describe her. The word, actually, that comes to my mind more often than not is ancient,” said Kristina.

  Again, Melissa seemed to teeter on some brink.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t see the point.”

  “It’s just a thought,” said Kristina. “A suggestion. Nothing more.”

  Melissa nodded again, yes, yes, she could see that, and appreciated it, don’t get her wrong.

  Then she said, “Thanks so much for the Mortimer. You really shouldn’t have.”

  “A gift to match the student.”

  “Ananda has one. Well, Ruth told you that.”

  “Yes.”

  “She loves it, I can tell.”

  Kristina nodded. Running out of things to say. Still seeing Melissa Marten on some sort of wire, performing a balance. Just a no
tion, but she was good at notions.

  :: 64 :: (Pasadena)

  Melissa closed the door after Kristina Medina. She had offered to lend her an umbrella to see her dry to her car, but Ruth’s teacher had declined. What’s a little rain? The last she saw of her was the colorful skirt (or was it skirts, Melissa wasn’t sure) ripple in the little winds and the brightly colored shawl flutter through the rain down the street. She didn’t look back. Melissa wondered fleetingly how old the woman was.

  She found Ananda and Ruth comparing Mortimers in the living room; observed them not noticing her for a while. Try this, said Ananda, and Ruth did. And try that. She did. Ananda impressed, even a little jealous, perhaps.

  Melissa sat down, still teetering a little, still a little unsure how much of a leak their secret had sprung, if any.

  “She wants you tested,” she said loudly enough to startle the little conference on the sofa to look up at her.

  “For what?” said Ruth, who always caught on pretty much instantly.

  “She thinks you’re a prodigy.” Then she looked directly at Ruth, and not necessarily kindly. “What have you told the woman? She mentioned Bruno.”

  “We had an exchange about him.”

  “What about him? What did you say?”

  “Just that he was burned at the stake after a short donkey ride.”

  “She made a point of telling me that you seem to know more about him than she does.”

  “Well, that would stand to reason, wouldn’t it?”

  “This is not a joke, Ruth.”

  “I know.”

  “What did she say?” Ananda wondered, a Mortimer in each hand, though each forgotten.

  “She wanted to know how Ruth knew.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her she reads a lot.”

  “I do,” said Ruth.

  “She also called her precocious,” said Melissa, still answering Ananda’s question. “Thinks we should have her tested.”

  Then she added, again looking right at Ruth, though still addressing Ananda, “She strikes her as ancient. Yes, that was the word she used. Ruth strikes her as ancient. Bright, she says, doesn’t even begin to do her justice.” Then finally to Ruth, “We’ve been over this.”

  Ruth, looking a little uncomfortable by this point, nonetheless smiled. “The woman is perceptive,” she said.

  “This is not a joke,” Melissa said again.

  “I know,” said Ruth. “I told you, I know.”

  The silence that fell upon the room was not comfortable. Rifts in it where turbulence seeped through. Ananda finally broke it, “Perhaps this is not so bad,” he said.

  Melissa looked at him as if wondering where the sound had come from. “What’s not so bad?”

  Ruth turned to him as well.

  “I think Ruth has done very well to keep a lid on things for as long as she has.”

  Ruth nodded in agreement. “It’s not easy,” she said.

  Melissa looked from one to the other, at these two people on her living room sofa, who, as far apart as two humans could be on the surface of it, yet were so familiar with each other. For good reason, of course, but at times still very hard to wrap your wits around.

  “Have you told her anything else?” Melissa asked Ruth.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Just about Bruno?”

  Ruth pondered for a while. “I do answer questions. And I do get them right.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Ananda told Melissa.

  “Always right?” inquired Melissa.

  “Well, yes,” said Ruth.

  “There might be something wrong with that,” said Melissa.

  The silence threatened to return, as uncomfortable as before. They had discussed this before, and never quite resolved it: the question of when?

  And the question of how?

  Ruth was impatient, and who could blame her? Ananda was a little impatient, too, getting on in years. Seventy-two by now, if she had things added up right.

  “Until we know how,” she said, “we cannot know when.” This as much to herself as to Ruth and Ananda.

  Ruth sighed. It was the same sigh of resignation she had sighed the last time the subject came to a boil. For they didn’t know how best to.

  Ananda looked at Melissa, but said nothing.

  “You’re only ten, for heaven’s sake,” said Melissa.

  “I’m ancient,” corrected Ruth, not quite joking.

  “Yes, and that’s the problem,” said Melissa.

  Ananda still said nothing.

  :: 65 :: (Pasadena)

  Although the subject had been raised before, the first true discussion about it took place when Ruth was six years old.

  Melissa was still having a hard time reconciling the adult, not to say ancient words often uttered by her young daughter. To be sure, there were times they actually struck her as faintly normal, but these time were still too few, and too far between; the extraordinary still holding the upper hand.

  At six, Ruth was getting antsy, is how Melissa put it. Restless, is how Ananda put it. Eager is how Ruth put it.

  She was here for a reason; Melissa was well aware of that. But she was also well aware that no one, not in this day and age (perhaps in India 2,500 years ago, yes, but not today) would listen for more than two minutes, if that, to a six-year old holding forth on suffering and the origin and end of suffering before calling the police, a shrink, or both.

  But Ruth did not want to hold her horses—though she did like the expression, she said—very Krishna.

  After an afternoon, evening, and a night that first serious discussion finally reached the consensus that Ruth would only “go forth” as Ananda put it, by consensus. Unless they all agreed on the how, and the when, she would, in fact, hold those horses, restless thought they were.

  Once Ruth (reluctantly) agreed, Melissa felt a little calmer about having the Buddha in her house—the Tathagata, her daughter.

  :

  The following summer, that of Ruth’s seventh year, saw another attempt at resolution. It was during their 2017 Colorado summer vacation, where Ruth had almost, almost—she stressed this—given the game away after overhearing two “new agers” (as Ananda called them) discuss Dhamma within her hearing. Normally possessed with a calm that saw her through most everything, something in this exchange rubbed her so the wrong way that she cast the bulk of caution to the wind and set out to correct them: “Excuse me,” she said, looking up at the two disputing know-it-alls, neither of whom heard her, or chose to hear her. “Excuse me,” she repeated, almost a shout, which caught their attention.

  “What?” In a curious unison.

  At which point Ruth finally managed to check herself, as she later reported at the condo (leased for two weeks).

  “I can’t do this much longer,” she complained. Primarily to Ananda, but to Melissa as well (washing up in the kitchen at the time, but within earshot).

  “Can’t do what?” she said, appearing in the kitchen doorway, towel in hand.

  Ruth told them what had happened. “They haven’t a clue,” she said. “Just words, words, words, back and forth. How could I stand by and listen to that?”

  Melissa, more pragmatic than either of her two charges (yes, at times she viewed Ananda as an impossibly older sibling or an even more impossibly graying child that she was responsible for—though this was neither accurate nor fair, for Ananda took well care of himself and more besides; still, it was just a feeling she occasionally had and didn’t particularly dislike) said, “It’s not like you have a choice.”

  “I do have a choice,” said Ruth.

  “We have agreed,” Ananda pointed out, referring to their still-in-force consensus.

  “We have agreed,” confirmed Melissa, referring to the same thing.

  Ruth acknowledged this by her silence. Then she took a deep breath, and said, “Do you have any idea what this is like?”

  “Yes,” said Ananda, who did.
>
  “I can imagine,” said Melissa, who tried to.

  Ruth was about to say, “No, you can’t,” but she did not. Instead she said, “I feel like a prisoner.”

  “I know,” said Ananda.

  “I can imagine,” said Melissa after a short pause, and still very much meaning it. Then, swinging the towel onto her left shoulder, she said, “You’re too young, Ruth. There is no way. It would not work.”

  Ruth did not look up, and looked every bit her age, faced by relentless logic.

  “I’m sorry,” said Melissa.

  Ruth remained silent.

  :

  At eight, it was shortly after her birthday and they were now on the promised trip to Catalina Island, things again came to a head. Ruth had said nothing on their way to Long Beach. Had said nothing on the boat to the island. Had sat quietly by the window, turned away from Melissa and Ananda, looking out at the gray and restless water. Had said nothing while they checked in and settled at their hotel, and now—while looking out the sliding glass doors at the still foggy ocean below—was still not talking.

  “Are you planning to keep this up the entire weekend,” said Melissa, none too gently, still putting things away in drawers.

  To no answer.

  Ananda looked at her, and shook his head gently: leave her alone.

  No, Melissa did not want to leave her alone. Buddha or no Buddha, Ruth was her petulant daughter and she was not behaving very well. “Ruth,” she said. “I’m talking to you.”

  This earned her a daughterly shoulder shrug, indicating she could not care much less.

  “Ruth.”

  Finally, “What?”

  “What is the matter with you?”

  No answer.

  “You wanted to come, remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what on earth is going on?”

  Ruth finally turned around and this changed the room’s mood completely. Both Ananda and Melissa saw that she was crying. Softly and sparingly, but crying nonetheless. Cheeks glistening, eyes shiny but un-bright.

  Melissa fought down the urge to run over and take her daughter in her arms, but not for long; for she lost sight of the Buddha and only saw the young girl, distraught, wrapped her arms around her and asked softly, “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything,” she said into her mother’s dress.