by Galaxy Craze
I followed Sati across the grass and into the woods, looking for the perfect tree, one with low branches away from the path where people walked. When Sati found the tree, she placed the spider on the bark and we watched as it crawled quickly up the trunk.
“It’ll make its web, up there,” I said, watching it. I wondered how long it would stay in this tree.
When I looked back at Sati, I realized she had been watching me. Our eyes met and I felt a flicker, like the flame on a matchstick, that our friendship had struck.
Sati said she wanted to show me the grapefruit grove. We walked past the houses and the pond, out to the field where the horses grazed, and beyond the stables to a shaded grove. In the grove, the trees were planted in long straight rows, and pale yellow grapefruits hung from the branches.
Sati stood on an empty wooden crate and pulled herself up into the tree so she sat straddling the branch with her legs. She picked a grapefruit and handed it down to me.
“Thanks,” I said, looking up at her. I held the fruit in my hands, and it felt warm from the sun. I had never had a grapefruit right from the tree before. I’d tasted honeysuckle off the stem, and berries from the field, but the only grapefruits I’d had came wrapped in cellophane from Sainsbury’s.
I dropped the skin to the ground. The fruit inside was watery and ripe, the sections breaking apart in my hand. When I bit into a piece, the juice ran down my chin.
“These are delicious,” I said to Sati. “They don’t taste like the ones from the supermarket.”
Sati pulled one off the branch for herself. She climbed out of the tree and we sat with our backs against the bark, eating the fruit. The smell of the grapefruit mixed with the smells of grass and sun.
“I’ve never heard the name Sati before,” I said.
Sati picked the white skin from the grapefruit. “Parvati gave me my name when we moved here.”
“Oh,” I said. “Does she give everyone a name?”
Sati shook her head. “Just some people.”
“What’s your real name?”
Sati looked up, confused, “You mean the name my parents gave me?”
I nodded.
“Alice.”
I looked at her and thought, Her name was Alice.
“When you go home, do people still call you Alice?”
Sati shrugged. “I don’t really go back to Denver anymore. I mean, I’ve only been once, when my grandmother was in the hospital.”
“Are your grandparents still alive?”
“Yes, but I haven’t seen them in three years.”
“My Grandmother Hannah died last year,” I said, “but I think about her all the time. Especially when I walk past the places she used to take us. I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking about her.”
She looked at her hands. “I used to miss mine too, but I made myself stop thinking about them. When we first came here I wanted to go home so badly I would steal money from my father and walk all the way to the gas station to call them from the pay phone.”
“The gas station with the shop?” I thought of the place we had stopped with Renee on the way from the airport, but it seemed as though it was miles away.
“Yeah,” Sati said. “I’d leave early in the day, and it would take an hour or more to walk there.”
I thought of Sati walking along the highway alone, with the cars and the sun: the road smelling of tar, the cars passing.
“You walked all the way on the road?”
Sati shook her head. “Not on the road. Someone would have seen me. I followed the stream at the end of the grove through the woods. But someone found out what I was doing and told Parvati.”
“What did she do?”
“She told me I wasn’t allowed to leave the ashram again. That was the last time I spoke to my grandparents. They drove here to see me once, but no one let them in,” she said.
“They came all the way and you didn’t see them?”
“No one told me they were here.” She leaned her head back against the tree, squinting up at the sun.
I imagined her grandparents, sitting in their car. Her grandmother looked like the older American women I had seen in the airport: overweight, in pastel colors and white ankle socks and white sneakers. A cooler, a hand-held fan, a map that had been unfolded and refolded on her lap. Waiting in the car, sweat forming beneath her legs against the leather seats. Sati’s grandfather walking up to the locked gate. Calling out to Alice. Calling her name over the gate. Her grandmother would look away. The smell of the canyon air, the deserted road; she would think the worst things. Things she had seen on television about cults and gurus.
“It’s all right,” Sati said. “Now I don’t want to see them anymore. I don’t want to leave or go anywhere else.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because I know now, that this is where God wants me to be.”
I looked at her.
From where we sat we could see the trees at the far end of the grove and the sun shining above them cast a yellow-orange glow.
Sati reached forward, gently wiping a drop of grapefruit juice from my shirt with her hand. “When we were younger we built a fort over there. We don’t use it anymore,” she said, “But now the younger kids do.”
I looked up at the sky. There was no breeze that I could feel, but the clouds moved swiftly across.
Sati grew quiet. “Oh, listen. Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Wait.” She put her finger to her lips.
I held my breath and heard the sound of bells in the distance.
“The bells are ringing. That means there’s darshan tonight,” she said.
“What’s darshan?”
“It’s when Parvati comes out and talks to everyone.”
Sati stood up. I didn’t want to leave our spot in the grove. I felt tired from the walk and warm from the sun.
“Come on,” she said. “If we don’t get there early we won’t get a seat near Parvati.”
She reached for my hand, pulling me up. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t care about a seat close to Parvati. I wanted to stay here, talking to Sati in the shade of the grapefruit trees.
Darshan was held in a large room in Parvati’s house, with brown carpeting and windows that rose up to the ceiling overlooking the pond. The room was lit only by candles and the paler light of the moon through the windows.
Sticks of incense burned on altars. Fresh flowers stood in vases. A daybed, where Parvati would sit, had been made up with orange and red silk fabrics and large pillows. A glass of iced tea, with pieces of lemon and fruit floating in it, waited on a tray with a single flower. I would spend most of the evening watching Parvati take sips from the drink and wondering what it tasted like.
Renee was hovering nervously around the daybed, arranging and rearranging the flowers and pillows. Keshi came in, carrying a vase of yellow roses. “They arrived just in time,” she said, as she set them down on the table.
They were not the wildflowers that grew in the surrounding fields; these yellow roses had been ordered and delivered by van from a florist’s shop. Like Sunday at church, everyone had dressed up a bit, the women in floral sundresses or blouses with skirts and the men in dress shirts and trousers. They sat on meditation pillows, waiting for Parvati to arrive. Everyone on the ashram came to darshan, even the babies and young children, who fell asleep on the floor with their heads in their mothers’ laps.
A man named Krishna Das began to play the harmonium, and Peter Runyun played the hand drums. A thin Indian woman sat straight-backed, with her eyes closed, hitting a small brass cymbal. The roomful of people started to sing an Indian song. My mother leaned over and whispered the name of the song into my ear. It was called the Hanuman Chalisa. It was a prayer to the guru.
Soon, everyone stood and the chanting grew louder. The door to Parvati’s rooms opened and she entered surrounded by the Women.
“My chelas,” Parvati said, as she walked through the c
rowd, blowing kisses, touching hands, “I love each and every one of you.”
A great cheer sounded in the room, rising like the tone of the cymbal. The devotees’ faces shone, like people in love.
Parvati took her seat at the front of the room and said she would lead us in a meditation to connect us with our luminous self, the self we were born with. With her as our teacher, she told us, we had the opportunity of reaching enlightenment in this lifetime. We had escaped the trappings and temptations of the outside world. We had been chosen. Guided—by God—to be with her.
She asked if we had any questions before the meditation began. A man near the front of the room raised his hand.
“Yes, my Thomas,” Parvati said lovingly, the way a mother might speak to a young child.
He sat on a meditation pillow with his back straight and his hands on his knees. He looked as though he was in his early thirties, with a boyish face, short blond hair, and a white-collared shirt buttoned to the neck.
“My pride,” he said, “is getting in the way of my devotion.”
Parvati looked at him. “Your pride?” she said. “What have you got to be proud of?”
For a moment Thomas appeared stunned, punched. Then everyone laughed and he relaxed, laughing along with them.
A pretty woman sitting near Parvati raised her hand. Her name was Kelly; she had long light-brown hair, a small sloped nose, and freckles. Earlier that day Sati had pointed her out to me. She said Kelly had had an affair with one of the men on the ashram, and as punishment Parvati made the man leave and they were never allowed to see each other again.
“Parvati,” Kelly said, “I’m trying so hard to forget about Michael, but I still feel heartbroken….” She paused, and I thought she might cry. “The pain of missing him feels unbearable at times.”
“The pain is unbearable?” Parvati said to her. “Go to India. See the children begging on the streets. Children with babies begging on the streets. Look at those children and then tell me about your broken heart.”
When there were no more questions to be answered, Parvati said we would begin the meditation. I saw Sati close her eyes so I closed mine. I wasn’t sure how to meditate. Was it a prayer, or a string of wishes? But Parvati told us to let go of the thoughts that came into our mind: to have no thoughts at all and focus only on our breath.
I could not think of nothing. I concentrated on my breath, but different things still came into my head. I remembered a day when I was eight or nine and we were staying by the sea in Scotland. It was not a warm day. I had gone for a walk by myself, late in the afternoon, and I sat down on rocks where the waves broke. The tide was coming in, and in the distance the line between sky and sea was turning to one color. The waves crashed loudly against the rocks and a wave crashed against me, soaking my clothes. I knew that one large wave or rush of water could pull me in, but I wasn’t afraid.
In my pocket was a fifty-pence piece, and I threw it into the sea. I made a wish—a wide wish—for all the people and for all the animals in the world. A wish for the sky and sea. A wish for everyone to be happy. I sat on the rocks, staring at the waves until the sky turned dark, and I felt the air blowing through my skin and through my bones, but at the same time I felt as though a light were shining out from me, shining out from the center of me.
When the meditation ended, it seemed as though a weight had been lifted from the room and calmness had settled in its place, lying down like a great sleeping cat.
That night, after the meditation, Parvati picked a flower from the vase. She said a short prayer in Hindi, kissed the petals, and tossed the flower into the room.
The flower landed in my mother’s lap.
An older man, with tired-looking eyes, raised his hand. “Parvati,” he said, trying to steady his voice, “I am ready to give you my heart.”
In the darkened room, I saw my mother nod, looking up at Parvati, as though she were saying, I am ready to give you my heart too.
Afterward, we rose from our places slowly, quietly, as though waking in a roomful of sleeping people. As we were leaving, I saw Sati standing outside the doorway of Parvati’s room, asking Keshi if she could go inside.
Most of the people left the room, but a few remained, still sitting on the floor, like the last guests at a party. The candles had burned low, the incense had turned to strings of ash. A small flame on a candle flickered inside a red glass vase. When I hear the word loneliness, when I see it written in a book, I think of that room.
Outside, our mother was talking to Renee and Caroline. She held the stem of the flower, like a candle, between her hands.
“It’s a sign,” Caroline whispered to her. She held her hands on her belly, her dress falling like a tent around her.
Renee nodded, looking down at the flower my mother held in her hands.
“I felt a peacefulness that I’ve never had before,” I heard our mother say.
“The teachings grow even deeper,” Caroline said.
“The beginning is often the most blissful time. Later, as you dig deeper it can be more painful. Right, Caroline?” Renee said. The two senior girls.
Eden and I stood next to each other, waiting for our mother to finish her conversation. There was a rustle in the crowd and a small woman with a high-pitched voice pushed her way through. “Excuse me, please. Excuse me,” she was saying.
The woman made her way toward Eden and me.
“May? Eden?” She said, pointing the end of her pencil at us.
“Yes.” I touched my collarbone. “I’m May.”
I didn’t know the woman’s name, but I had seen her before, putting up notes in the houses, approaching people in the dining hall with her pen and clipboard.
“Well! I’ve been trying to find you two all day. I really need to talk to you.” She spoke so quickly I could barely break the words apart. “You haven’t been doing your chores, you know, and when chores aren’t done the whole place becomes a mess.”
“I didn’t know we had chores,” I said.
“Everyone who lives here has a chore. How do you think things get done? It’s not by magic.”
“Well, we don’t live here. We’re just on holiday.” I said.
Her eyebrows rose from behind her glasses. “Holiday? This isn’t Club Med.”
She studied her clipboard, pressing the rim of her eyeglasses to the bridge of her nose. “Let’s see what we have for you…. Okay. May, you are working in the stables taking care of the horses, and you, young man, will be in the vegetable garden.”
“The vegetable garden?” Eden said. “I hate vegetables.”
“Well, you’re gonna learn to love them, sweetheart.” She wrote down the times and places of our chores on index cards and handed them to each of us. “They start tomorrow. Capito? Be on time and do your work well. I don’t think you’d be happy cleaning toilets, would you?”
As we walked back to our room, our mother told us that she had been assigned a chore too: cooking for Parvati in the kitchen of her house. She cradled the flower in her hand. The moonlight reflected on the dark pond, as she looked up at the sky. “Wasn’t I lucky? Of all the places to land, the flower fell in my lap,” she said, half joking and half amazed.
Like a coin flipped, a turn of luck: It was a sign that this time we had come to the right place. This time she had made the right choice, and behind her the past mistakes turned golden: the house by the sea, the fights with our father, the things that had upset her were the things that had brought us here, the stepping-stones that had led us.
THIRTEEN
Our mother stood on the dock, in her long skirt and short-sleeve blouse, a straw hat on her head, watching Eden and Jabe row a small wooden boat to the grassy bank.
“He’s so happy here,” she said as she watched them. Her words sounded like a song. Her voice rose and her face flushed when she saw that we were happy. A toy at Christmastime, a kiss on our forehead, anything that made us smile.
“May, you’re looking a little red;
don’t forget to put the sun lotion on.”
“I’ll make sure she does,” Sati said, smiling at me.
The lunch bell sounded through the ashram and my mother looked at the face of her watch. “May, will you make sure your brother eats lunch? And please put some more sun lotion on his back.”
I sighed, looking up at the sky. “Why don’t you do it? You’re his mother,” I said, mostly for Sati. I saw her back shake with laughter, as she hid her face in her towel.
“May,” my mother said, sounding hurt, falling, as though I had ruined her moment on the dock, watching her happy son. “Remember what Parvati said? She asked you to help me while we were here. Please, May,” she said again, looked at her wristwatch and rushed away barefoot, across the dry grass to the storage room, to get the flour for the cake for Parvati’s five-o’clock tea.
In the dining hall, I sat beside Eden, making him eat the kale and whole wheat spaghetti.
Before Sati and I left for our chores, I slathered sun lotion on Eden and accidentally got some in his eyes.
“See,” I said, in a goody-goody voice as we walked to the stables, “I’m helping Mum with Eden, just like Parvati asked me to.”
“Parvati can see too,” Sati said. “She sees everything.”
“From where?” I had an image of her perched in the trees.
“God tells her.”
When Sati talked about Parvati, it was as though she had been swept away; she was seeing me and talking to me from the circle of another world, a world where Parvati was as definite as the sky and the sea.
Sati stood in the field, brushing a brown horse named Boxer. “Every day,” she told me, “we have to give them fresh water and put clean hay in their stalls.”
She wore her red bikini top, navy-blue dolphin shorts, Dr. Scholl’s, and nothing else. She led me around the stables, showing me where to put the brush and tack. The water and feed. The clean hay. The apples and carrots. She told me the names of each of the horses and stroked their soft noses.
When we had cleaned, watered, and fed the horses, we went inside the stables to sit in the shade and rest. I told her that we’d missed breakfast and she poured me a paper cup full of cool water and gave me a grapefruit. I thought of Eden in the vegetable garden and wondered if anyone had offered him a glass of water or anything to eat.
