by Galaxy Craze
Sati lay back on the hay bales and fanned herself with her hand. “I asked Parvati to give you this chore,” she said.
“You did?”
“It’s one of the best ones. Only the Jewels get it.”
“What are the Jewels?” I said.
“The Jewels are Parvati’s favorite people, and everybody wants to be one.”
“Oh,” I said. I sat across from her, with my back in a spot of sun.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Sati asked.
“A boyfriend?”
The question surprised me, like walking into a glass door. Boys weren’t interested in me. My mother and her friend Annabel, even Greta, promised me that I was pretty, but they said not in a way that boys my age would see. “When you’re older,” they said.
I knew what I lacked: a tartness, a tease, a fun-loving flirtatiousness. There were girls in my form, Samantha Fenton and Sheba Marks, who had boyfriends, and everyone knew they were not virgins. I watched them—while I pretended to wait at the bus stop outside the school gates—with their uniform skirts rolled up to their thighs, smoking cigarettes and flirting with the older boys from the grammar school across the street.
“So, do you?” Sati asked.
I wasn’t sure whether or not I should lie. Maybe she thought of me as a Samantha Fenton.
I shook my head. “No, but there’s a boy I like in Scotland. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Sometimes Brad and I fool around, but it’s not much fun. I had a boyfriend in Denver; he was older. He was fun.”
When I imagined an American girl, it was Sati. Strong and thin, singing the words of a song; confident with boys and confident with girls.
“Why was he fun?” I pressed my hands beneath my thighs, into the hay bales. I had worn my favorite T-shirt and denim miniskirt. I knew Sati worked in the stables and I had dressed up a bit for her.
Sati shrugged. “He knew what he was doing,” she said.
The light from the window fell against her, so her body was in the sun but her legs were still in the shade. “Do you want me to show you what he used to do to me?”
“All right.” I thought she would tell me the details, the way Greta had told me about her boyfriends, or draw a picture in the dry sand: a diagram.
Sati stood up. “Come up here,” she said, as she climbed up to the hay loft.
I followed behind her, up the ladder.
In the hay loft, she stood facing me under the low beamed ceiling.
“Lift up your arms,” she said.
I lifted my arms above my head. She stepped toward me, took the bottom of my T-shirt, and pulled it over my head. She dropped the shirt on the floor by my feet, then pulled down the shoulder straps of my bra.
“Oh,” I said, not expecting this. I took a step back.
She placed her hands on my breasts, cupping them. Then she held my nipples between her thumb and finger, gently turning them until they grew hard. At first I stood, unsure of what to do; no one had ever touched me like this.
She took my hand, pulling me to the floor. “Lie down,” she said. I lay down on my back, looking at her. She put her mouth onto my nipples, sucking first one and then the other. Then she undid her bikini top and put her face to mine, kissing my mouth. I put my hands on her breasts, touching them the way she had touched me. Her breasts were smaller than mine, firmer, her nipples almost brown. I felt her tongue in my mouth. I had kissed boys before, but still I was not sure how or if I kissed well. I remember feeling swallowed by them, but Sati’s lips were the same as mine and this kiss felt gentle, tingling.
Then she lay down beside me, looking up at the wooden ceiling. I remember feeling stunned, watching the dust rising in the sun.
Sati sat up. She pulled her bikini top back on and made her way down the ladder. I could hear her below, humming a song to herself.
After a while I sat up. I felt unbalanced, as though I had just stepped from a boat to shore. I took my time, unsure of what I would say when I saw her. When I looked at my chest, my nipples were bright red. I held the palms of my hands against them for a moment, before getting dressed and going down the ladder.
My mother, Renee, and Caroline stayed late over tea and dessert, talking in the dining hall. The women on the ashram loved to talk about Parvati—her hair, her jewelry, the outfits she wore—as though she were a movie star.
Renee said that when Parvati came back from India last year with her nose pierced, half the women on the ashram rushed to the piercing and tattoo parlor at the Jackson Mall, requesting a diamond stud, only they didn’t have diamonds at the Jackson Mall; instead, they had rhinestones in plated silver that gave them all infections.
When Richard, a famous hair stylist and devotee of Parvati’s from Los Angeles, gave her a fashionable short haircut, many of the women and teenagers took a photograph of Parvati with her new haircut to Sizzors, the local beauty parlor.
Parvati’s clothes were handmade of imported silks from India. They were shipped to her in boxes covered with colorful stamps. Her disciples gave her the diamonds and gold she needed to keep her grounded to the earth. For her birthday, Sati’s father had given her a strand of diamonds that was rumored to have cost over five thousand dollars.
After they had talked about Parvati and my mother talked about her troubled relationship with my father, their next favorite subject was motherhood.
Renee had never had children and did not hide the fact that the subject bored her. She would often excuse herself when the conversation turned to Caroline’s pregnancy and children, and leave to join another group in the dining hall.
Caroline told my mother of the advantages of raising children in a close community like the ashram. She said that when Sati was young, she remembered feeling so lonely and depressed during the day, at home in the suburbs of Denver. The house, she felt, was like a stone around her she could not move. But here she never felt lonely, and since all the cooking and chores were shared, she never felt overwhelmed by housework.
My mother told her of a dream she had once, when I was a baby and she was exhausted. She was nineteen and a new mother, the shop had just opened, and Simon could not afford to take any time off from work to help with the baby. When he came home he still expected dinner to be ready and the house to be clean.
Just before dawn, after being up for hours during the night, she fell asleep and dreamed that fairies had flown in the window and were in the kitchen, scrubbing the pots and pans, drying the wineglasses with a tea towel. The dream was so vivid, she said, that when she woke and went downstairs to the messy kitchen—the sink still full of last night’s dishes, dirty glasses still on the table, the floor unswept—she burst into tears.
While our mothers talked late in the dining hall. Brad and Dylan gathered all the kids on the ashram to play a game of Capture the Flag. They announced themselves captains, and each took turns choosing who would be on their team. They picked the girls they liked first—Brad picked Sati, Dylan picked Summer—and Eden and Jabe and the other younger children were chosen last.
We ran barefoot around the grass, until 10 P.M., our curfew, when we had to be back in our houses. We would fall asleep in our swimming suits and wake up the next morning and start the day over again in the swimming suits we had slept in.
I spent the days with Sati. Eden spent the days with Jabe and the other boys, fixing and rebuilding the fort in the grapefruit grove. In the afternoon, when we were done with chores, we would all meet at the pond. Eden and Jabe, Brad and the other older boys, Sati and I, Summer and Molly. We swam and lay in the sun, flicking away the horseflies, until it was dinnertime and we would walk to the dining hall in our swimming costumes and sit down at the tables.
My skin burned and peeled, burned and peeled again, and finally turned brown. I lost track of time; the days somersaulted into each other. I didn’t want the summer to end. This was the best summer holiday we had ever had.
Sati and I lay on the grass at the edge of the pond in the late mo
rning sun. I was staring at my arm, watching the water drops evaporate, when I heard a woman’s voice.
“Hi, girls!” It was Kelly. “Enjoying the last days of summer vacation? School starts Monday, you know.”
Kelly stood in front of us. I saw her calves and pretty sandaled feet with coral-colored painted toenails. She wore a T-shirt that said BROWN UNIVERSITY across the chest and a denim skirt.
“School’s starting Monday?” Sati whined. “I don’t want the summer to end yet. Can’t we have just one more week of vacation?”
Kelly laughed. “One more week? It’s already the middle of September; all the other schools have already begun.”
“It’s the middle of September?” I said. The sun shone brightly in my eyes as I sat up.
“Yep,” Kelly said. “And remember, no bathing suits or gum chewing allowed in my classroom.” She waved good-bye to us and walked away.
It was the middle of September! There had been no change in the weather; not one leaf had fallen from the trees. The sun was as constant as a light left on.
Our father would be back from India by now, working in the shop. My school in London began last week, and Mrs. Jenkins had warned me that if I missed any more time I would be left behind. I pictured the girls with their holiday tans talking about their summers in the school courtyard.
Sati stood up, shaking out her towel. “I can’t believe the summer is over,” she said again. “We better go to chores now.”
“I have to find my mother,” I said. I felt a panic begin, ticking inside of me.
“What’s wrong, May?”
“I didn’t realize how long we had been here. We have to go back to London.”
Sati looked at me. I thought, for a moment, that she would cry. “I don’t want you to leave,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “Please don’t leave yet. Maybe Parvati will let you live here. She doesn’t let everyone stay, only special people. I can ask my dad to ask her.”
“Live here?” I had never thought about living here; it was so far away from home. “We can’t live here,” I began to say. “My father’s in London and our house … we have a cat … and my grandfather’s getting old….” I said the words, but they sounded too simple, like pictures in a children’s book.
“I missed my home at first too,” Sati said.
“I have to tell my mother,” I said.
“I won’t tell anyone that you’re not going to chores.”
“Thanks, Sati.”
“I’ll see you at dinner tonight,” she said, as she slipped on her Dr. Scholl’s and made her way across the grass to the stables.
I ran to our house and up the stairs into our room, but my mother wasn’t there. I stood in the room, looking at the bed and the walls, at the clothes hanging in the closet, thinking, We have to go home.
The sounds of splashing and shouting came from the pond, and in the spaces between the trees I could see Eden and Jabe cannonballing off the dock.
“Eden!” I called, but he did not hear me. The light fell in pieces through the branches. I stood for a moment watching them, laughing and shouting and splashing each other in the water.
I ran to Parvatis house. Through the glass doors, I saw my mother in the kitchen, cooking with Keshi. I tapped on the glass, waiting for one of them to notice me. They were talking, mixing dough in a bowl. The radio was on and neither of them heard me. In the light of the kitchen, my mother looked happy and carefree—talking with Keshi, opening the oven, laughing with her hands on her knees.
I tapped louder on the glass and my mother turned around to see me.
“May?” she said, looking surprised, as she pulled open the sliding door.
“Mum, I need to talk to you.”
“Is something the matter?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“I need to talk to you alone.”
Keshi turned from the stove, a mitt on her hand. “We’re just in the middle of making Parvati’s tea.” A bell timer sounded, and Keshi pulled out a rack of apple turnovers and placed them on the counter to cool.
My mother looked at Keshi. “Keshi, the next batch won’t be ready for twenty minutes. I’m just going to get some flour from the storeroom.”
Keshi sighed. “I’ll watch the pastries and make the jasmine tea,” she said, sounding annoyed.
“I won’t be long,” my mother said, as she wiped her hands on her apron.
Outside, the sun shone down on the flat stones. I saw our reflections, standing there in the sun, as she closed the glass doors.
“What’s the matter, darling?” my mother asked, when we were away from the house.
“Do you know that it’s already the middle of September?”
She looked at me but did not answer.
“Aren’t we going home?”
She looked to the left, staring out over her shoulder. “No.”
“What do you mean?” I heard a crack in my voice. “What happened to our airplane tickets?”
“They’ve expired.”
I had a feeling that I was being pulled down, suddenly, under the waves. My mother put her arms around me, “I’m sorry. I was going to talk to you and Eden tonight. Parvati said we could stay here, and I think it’s a good idea.”
My mother reached for me, stroking a loose piece of hair from my eyes, but I hit her hand away and she flinched.
“You said we were only here for a holiday!”
“I know, but you and Eden seem so happy here. You get to spend so much time outside and you’ve both made friends. You don’t have to listen to your father and me arguing. Parvati says staying here is the best thing I can do for my children.”
“She doesn’t know,” I said. “I want to go home.”
“Don’t you like it here? What about Sati? Won’t you miss her?” Her voice, I thought, had a slant—a needle pulling a thread. Had she seen us together? Had she seen us standing too close to each other, face-to-face in the pond, one of us with our eyes closed? Had she seen us touching each other beneath our beach towels as we lay on the dock, thinking no one was watching?
I looked away, at the pale green grass. I would miss Sati; I would miss her so much. She was the only reason not to go home.
“How long are we going to stay here?”
My mother shook her head. “I’m not sure. Let’s see what happens.”
“A week?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Dad know?”
“Yes.”
From the doorway of the house, Keshi called my mother’s name.
“I have to go now,” she said. “We’ll talk about this later. May, please don’t tell Eden. I should tell him myself. All right?”
From the doorway, Keshi called her name again.
“’Bye, darling,” she said, kissing me lightly on the cheek. She turned away from me, walking quickly and then running up the stone steps to the kitchen.
I watched my mother disappear through the doors. I felt the sun on my back and shoulders, warm and heavy. I could not believe we had missed our flight home. That the day had come and gone, that the airplane had left without us. I imagined our names being called out over the loudspeakers in the airport and our three empty seats in a row. What had I been doing? Sunbathing with Sati. Eden running to the fort with Jabe. And our mother had known. Had she looked at her wristwatch, thinking, The flight is gone?
When we first came here I imagined what the ashram would look like to my father. The grounds were constantly being tended to, the temple and houses repainted. The trees, the bright green leaves, and the flowers were always in bloom—flowers that would cost one pound fifty a stem from the florist. I thought, looking around as though seeing it for the first time, He might think it is beautiful here, he might actually like it, which made me eager for him to come.
He would see our mother, suntanned and relaxed, laughing with her friends. We would sleep in the small room together. Maybe Parvati would cast a spell around them—a golden
circle, a ring—and they would fall in love like they did when they first met.
But inside the houses was a smell of sulfur in the water mixed with the stale smell of incense, which had seeped into the furniture and wall-to-wall carpet. The kitchens were old, with linoleum floors and the counters were stained.
The first time my mother left my father, before Eden was born, we went to live in a house in Shepherd’s Bush that had been converted to flats. An old man lived below us with his small dog; it was his house, and his wife had recently died. Sometimes I would go to his place and he would make tea, open a packet of biscuits, and let me watch the afternoon telly. He was a kind man, but too old to sweep the stairs or repaint the halls, where the paint fell like snowflakes from the ceiling.
There was only one bedroom, so I slept behind an antique screen in the living room. My father came to see me on Sundays, his visiting day. One Sunday the bell rang and I answered it without thinking. I had forgotten he was coming and was still in my nightgown, playing with my dolls on the floor by the radiators. I had been watching cartoons and drinking warm milk with Ribena since dawn.
He stood in the doorway, in his navy winter coat. “Did you forget about me? I’ve got the car double-parked on the street.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t forget.” I hurried to get dressed behind the screen.
When I came out, he was standing in the living room.
“How can she live like this?” He bent down where the ceiling sloped. The small kitchen table was covered with wineglasses and teacups, the purple syrup of the Ribena had spilled onto the table in a sticky puddle, and the ashtray was overflowing with gray ash. I hoped he wouldn’t see my fingerprint in the ash. It had looked so soft that morning, so much like the finest sand, I had to touch it. I could still see the mark and smell the ash on my fingertip.
There was an expression on my father’s face, around his mouth, as though he were standing in the cold. I followed him down the stairs to the street.
