Enlightenment for Idiots

by Anne Cushman

  I closed my eyes, rested my hands protectively on my belly, and tried to talk myself into believing that I wasn’t insane. I couldn’t get comfortable. My back throbbed. My pubic bone hurt. Trying not to wake up Devi Das, I rolled up a blanket and stuck it between my knees to ease the pressure on my sacrum.

  Even my hair was exhausted. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to swallow me.

  MY CHILD has fallen into a dark well in a snowstorm. He is at the bottom, screaming. “Mommy!” He cries. “Mommy! Help!” I am leaning over the edge, frantic, looking for a rope to throw him. Then I realize that the only thing to do is to jump in after him. But when I get to the bottom, the well is empty. I stand there sobbing in a whirl of snowflakes.

  WITH A SHARP inhale, I jolted awake. In a panic, I reached down and gave my belly a shake. The baby kicked back, an irritated thump.

  Mommy! Help! It was dawn. I looked around the room in the pale light. Siddhartha and Maya had their blankets pulled over their heads. Devi Das was snoring. Back in California, it was about five in the afternoon. Tom was probably sitting in traffic, listening to NPR, heading back alone to his empty palace. My mom was probably fixing dinner for her new man—attempting some elaborate meal from a cookbook she’d never tried before, then giving up halfway through and sending out for gourmet takeout from Dine-One-One. Lori and Joe must be getting in a last bit of gardening before the sun goes down. And Matt? I didn’t even know what country he was in.

  Help! For the first time in months, I remembered the letter that Lori gave me before I left, with instructions to read it when I was about to do something stupid. I sat up and fumbled through the backpack I shared with Devi Das, pulling out the pouch that held my passport and traveler’s checks. The sound of the backpack zipper was loud in the silent room, but no one moved. I pulled out Lori’s envelope, gray and ragged around the edges. I grabbed a pencil-sized flashlight, tore open the envelope, and sat up in bed.

  Dear Amanda,

  I’m writing this thinking you probably won’t ever read it. By the time you need it, you’ll probably have lost it—stuck it into some book as a bookmark and then left it on a table in a restaurant somewhere, or written your phone number on the back and handed it to someone. And even if you do still have it, it’s the last thing you’re going to want to read. You’re afraid that I’m going to tell you not to do whatever harebrained probably lovesick thing you’re about to do—and the problem is, you want to do that thing. You really do.

  And the last thing you want is me ruining your fun. As I’m writing this, you’re in your bedroom, zipping your backpack, getting ready to head off on the greatest adventure you’ve ever had. As you’re reading this—who knows where you are? Maybe you’re on a beach by the Arabian Sea, wondering if you should take Ecstasy with some guy you just met in a chai shop. Maybe you’re in some Tibetan monastery, wondering if you should shave your head and ordain.

  But—surprise. I’m not going to tell you not to do that thing, whatever it is. I’m not going to tell you not to sleep with that guy. I’m not going to tell you not to get on that train. I’m not going to tell you not to raft down that river, or smoke that chillum, or drink that cup of tea with the stranger in the next seat on the train, or head off for that country where there’s just been a revolution.

  All I’m going to say is this—remember how special you are. It’s something you miss noticing, a lot of the time. Sometimes I think you chase after all these adventures—Matt, enlightenment, Tom, backbends, hang gliding, whatever it is—because you think they’ll give you something you don’t have. It’s like you’re looking for the missing ingredient in the soup of your life. But the thing is—nothing’s missing. You’ve got it all. And I don’t mean that in some airy-fairy kind of way, like “the secret to life is inside you,” and all that crap. I just mean it in a really ordinary way: You’re fine. You really are.

  So do whatever you want. You will anyway, I know. Just remember, I’ll love you whether or not you get enlightened. It’s just that if you do, it will probably be a little bit harder.

  Enclosed was a picture of the two of us taken on the first day of college. I’d never seen it before, although I did have a vague memory of Lori’s mother snapping one last shot before she drove away. We were sitting together on her bed in the freshman dorm room we’ve just moved into. We looked absurdly young. My hair was pulled back in the tight ponytail I’d worn it in since second grade; I was peering through the lenses of my big glasses as if regarding the world from inside an aquarium. I was grinning the big, fake grin of someone who doesn’t want anyone to know how terrified she is.

  Lori was sitting next to me in a red sweater, chubby and confident, like a robin who knew where all the worms were hidden. Her arm was around my shoulder, although we had only met about an hour ago. But looking at her picture, I saw something that I hadn’t seen then: She was scared, too. She was lonely. She needed someone to adopt as badly as I needed someone to adopt me.

  “How do you know Joe’s right for you?” I’d asked Lori once. “Is it a kind of electricity?”

  “It’s the opposite of electricity,” she’d said. “Electricity is hot and bright, like lightning, or the inside of a toaster. This is more like a hot-water bottle. When I’m with him, I feel…calm. As if some wind inside me that I hadn’t even known was blowing had stopped, and I can hear the birds singing outside the window.”

  This was so far from the way I felt with Matt that I hadn’t known what to say. Matt caused an electrical storm all through my body. That was how I knew I loved him—all those painful lightning bolts of unquenched desire.

  But it was the way I felt about Lori, I realized now. It was how I had always felt in her presence: safe.

  Exactly the opposite of how I felt now.

  I lay down on the bed, clutching the letter, and began to cry.

  THE NARROW TRAIL to Maitri Ma’s cave wound up the side of the river gorge. Jagged white mountains sliced into the ice-blue sky. My breath was shallow. I could hear the snow squeaking under my shoes. The cold, thin air stung my nostrils and burned my lungs, but still left me breathless. We paused for snacks in a snowy meadow: roasted peanuts, chocolate cookies, spicy chole mix, dried mango and papaya. Then we plodded on. My knee had started aching again. I could feel a blister starting on the back of my left heel.

  The hike took longer than we had expected; it was early afternoon by the time we got within sight of Maitri Ma’s cave. I was sweating and shivering at the same time, and my fingers were numb inside my gloves. Her cave was halfway up the side of a steep hill, almost a cliff, with stone steps leading up to it. As we approached, a tiny woman stepped out, bundled in orange robes and a thick brown wool shawl. Her forehead was painted with the stripes of a sadhu. A scarf was wrapped around her white hair.

  We hadn’t sent word we were coming, but she seemed unsurprised. We bowed, our hands in prayer position in front of our hearts. Siddhartha held out the oranges we had brought as a gift—“Namaste, Maitri Ma, we have come for teachings”—but she cut him off with a shake of her head and beckoned for us to come into her cave.

  It didn’t have a door, just blankets and plastic bags and burlap sacks hung over the opening. Inside, it was lit by candles and an oil lamp. A wood fire burned in a little stove in the back, next to an altar with a clay statue of Shiva on it. Five cups of tea were already set out around a tablecloth spread on the ground.

  We bowed, sat down, and drank the hot chai in silence. The cup was deliciously warm under my aching fingers. My whole body hurt. I was dizzy from exhaustion and altitude. But I also felt strangely calm, in way that I hadn’t felt since my travels began so many months ago. Maitri Ma looked like an ordinary Indian grandmother in sadhu’s garb. But already I felt the palpable field of peace she was emanating.

  My journey was complete: I had finally arrived at my guru’s cave. For the first time in my travels, I felt sure that I had come to the right place. There was nothing more to do. All I had to do was sit at h
er feet, and see what unfolded. I’ve arrived. I closed my eyes. I’ve finally arrived.

  Maitri Ma studied our faces. When we had finished, she pulled out a small black chalkboard and began to write on it.

  “You are welcome to stay and pursue the path of liberation,” she wrote, and I felt relief course through me.

  Then she erased it.

  “All except you, my daughter,” she wrote, and looked me in the eyes. Her eyes were immense and so black that I couldn’t tell where the pupil ended and the iris began. It was like looking into the night sky. “This is not your path. You must go home immediately.”

  In stone houses and stately halls, He is not. In splendid parlors and massive temples, He is not. In holy garbs, He is not. But He is in the thoughts of those who have overcome their desires. Even though they have bodies of flesh, He grants them liberation.

  —Tiru-Mandiram, ca. AD 700

  CHAPTER 23

  WE DIDN’T EXPECT you back for another few weeks, so Hank is still in your room.” Ernie maneuvered his Toyota around a FedEx truck and up the on-ramp onto the freeway. “But you’re welcome to sleep on the couch for a couple of days, until he gets his stuff out of there.”

  The couch. I hadn’t thought about it since I left: lumpy and off-white, with springs poking up through the upholstery. For a while, we kept finding cat kibble hidden under the armrest; Ishtar finally figured out that a couple of mice were pilfering it from the cat bowl and stashing it there while they built a nest in the cushions. I felt the pieces of the life I’d left behind waiting for me to pick them up and go on, like props for a play that was resuming after a brief intermission.

  “That’s okay. You can just take me straight to Lori’s. She said I could stay there as long as I needed to.” Lori couldn’t come to the airport to pick me up; she and Joe were teaching an all-day permaculture workshop at a vineyard in Napa. But she’d told me to make myself at home until they got back that evening. I stared out Ernie’s car window at a manicured ribbon of freeway, so smooth and clean you could eat off it. Huge, shiny cars purred down it in an orderly line, most of them carrying only one person. Slanting afternoon sunlight glinted off the windows of the pastel houses dotting the burnt-gold hillsides. Compared to India, San Francisco looked like a city that had just been taken out of its box.

  Ernie looked at me sideways. “To be honest, Amanda, you don’t look so good. You look like you’re about to keel over.”

  “What do you expect? I just got off a thirty-hour plane ride.” It was 5:30 in the afternoon, and we were hitting the rush-hour traffic: a jam of commuters inching their way home, their faces all slightly worried, as if they were each watching their own private disaster movie on their windshield. In the driver’s seat of the Prius stopped next to me, a woman with short blonde hair in a hooded black sweatshirt was pulling a piece of paper out of a fax machine plugged into her cigarette lighter. We crawled past her and paused next to a red Jaguar driven by a bald man talking on a cell phone. Both of their faces wore a tight, anxious look I’d forgotten while I was in India. I have everything, but it’s not enough, their faces said. And I’m scared it’s going to be taken away.

  Ernie shook his head. “It’s not just that. You look like you need a doctor. I hope you haven’t let your health insurance lapse.” As a Zen insurance agent, talking about health coverage was Ernie’s idea of an intimate conversation, right up there with a nice discussion of the Prajnaparamita Sutra.

  “No, I’m still covered. Remember? You helped me set up an auto-payment.” I tilted my seat back and closed my eyes. I shouldn’t be here at all. In India, it was just after dawn. In the mountains past Gangotri, Siddhartha and Devi Das and Maya were just getting up to meditate with Maitri Ma. They were sitting on the floor of a candlelit cave, wool blankets wrapped around their shoulders. They were stepping out to pee in the snow under the deodar trees, their breath fogging in the cold air. Why wasn’t I with them? Why had I alone been turned away?

  LORI’S KEY WAS where it always was, under the pot of geraniums to the left of her front door. I unlocked the door, hauled my backpack into her tiny living room, and sat down on the boot bench to take off my shoes. Reaching my feet had become an extreme sport; I’d been putting off clipping my toenails for a couple of weeks because it was just too challenging. I crossed my leg clumsily over my thigh to peel off the sweat-crusted socks I’d been wearing since Delhi.

  I had tried to argue with Maitri Ma, then to plead. But Maitri Ma had put away her chalkboard and shaken her head. In the end, I had given up. I had trekked back down the mountain with the guide—Devi Das had offered to come with us, but I’d insisted that he stay behind. We’d spent the night with the Gangotri swami again, then hitchhiked a ride on the back of an army truck to the place where the road was open and we could catch a bus back to Uttarkashi. A bus to Dehra Dun, a train to Delhi, a plane home…No wonder I felt so awful. I’d been on the road for over a week.

  Lori’s house was as familiar to me as my own. Everything looked exactly the same as the last time I was here: the potted fern in the corner, a birthday present to me that she’d reclaimed after I kept forgetting to water it. The wall hanging she’d woven from dried persimmon branches, arching over the dark red chenille couch. The lampstands carved in the shape of dancing goddesses holding their bulbs solicitously over Joe’s favorite overstuffed armchair. A pair of Joe’s hiking boots leaned against Lori’s sneakers in the shoe rack. Pumpkin, their elderly orange cat, curled on her corduroy cushion in front of the wood stove, where a few embers still glowed behind the glass door. The house even smelled exactly the same—a comforting collision of vanilla and cloves and sautéed garlic and the yeasty, toasty scent of fresh-baked bread.

  All I wanted to do was wash my face, brush my teeth, and collapse on Lori and Joe’s queen-sized bed. I heaved myself up, trudged toward the bathroom, then froze. From the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, a stranger was staring back at me. She was gaunt, with enormous eyes ringed with shadows in a dirt-smudged face. Her hair frizzed wildly on one side of her head, pressed greasily flat against her skull on the other. She was wearing grubby, baggy pants and a stained lime-green shirt as shapeless as a tent. Her belly jutted in front of her, completely preposterous, as if she were a skinny child with a pillow under her shirt pretending to be pregnant.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I looked in a full-length mirror. How could I be so different, when everything else here was exactly the same? If this was a play, my part had been totally rewritten since the last act. When would the director give me my new lines?

  “I’VE MADE YOU an appointment with my gynecologist this afternoon. She’s at the UCSF Medical Center.” Lori stood at her kitchen counter the next morning, cracking eggs into a bowl. “You’ve got to get some decent medical care.”

  I had awoken just before dawn in Lori’s bed, groggy and disoriented, to find that I’d been asleep for almost thirteen hours. Joe and Lori were asleep on the sofa bed in their living room; I hadn’t even heard them come home. Now I was sitting at Lori’s kitchen table, showered and dressed in one of Lori’s scoop-necked blouses and peasant skirts, my hands wrapped around a steaming mug of peppermint tea. Her tiny kitchen was separated from her living room only by a low counter, lined with clear canisters filled with grains and beans. Morning fog hung outside the windows; we’d lit the woodstove, but the house hadn’t warmed up yet.

  “I told you, I’ve been seeing a doctor in India. Less than a couple of weeks ago she said everything was going fine.”

  “Right.” From Lori’s tone, I might as well have told her that my positive prognosis came from a fortune cookie. She shook salt and pepper into the eggs, added a splash of milk, and began scrambling them with a fork. She dropped a pat of butter in a cast-iron pan and began stirring it around with a spatula, watching it melt. “Are you taking prenatals, at least?”

  “Every day.” Almost.

  Lori poured the eggs into the pan, then pulled a bottle d
own from on top of her refrigerator and handed it to me. “Well, I got you these just in case. They’re all-natural food-based supplements.” She sliced a loaf of whole wheat bread with a long, serrated knife and popped two pieces into the toaster. “And you’re doing your kick counts?”

  “The baby kicks all the time.” Come to think of it, I had read something somewhere about counting them. I put my hand on my belly and felt a reassuring whomp.

  “And are you doing your Kegels every morning?” She stirred the eggs in the pan.

  “My what?”

  “You should be contracting and releasing your vaginal muscles at least a hundred times a day to prepare for delivery.”

  Yeah, right. My vaginal muscles. I knew there was something else I was supposed to be doing while I was hiking up that mountain in the Himalayas. The toast popped up. I watched Lori spread it with butter, plop it onto a sunshine-yellow plate, slide the eggs onto the plate next to it. My jet-lagged body didn’t know what time it was: Did I want breakfast or dinner? What I really wanted was chai: not one of Lori’s caffeine-free herbal brews, but real Indian tea, boiled over a wood fire, tasting of smoke, with too much sugar in it. I wanted puffy white idli with spicy sambar sauce. I wanted sour yogurt, a little bubbly from overfermentation, and I wanted someone to call it curd. “You know what? I’m not really hungry. Why don’t you eat those yourself?”

  “You need something with protein in it.” Lori set the plate down in front of me and sat down across from me. “Stop arguing. Just eat.”

  THE WAITING ROOM at the UCSF Women’s Health Center was sunny and cheerful. Three or four other women were waiting, most of them older than me, all of them visibly in various stages of pregnancy. I sat in an upholstered chair and filled out the new-patient paperwork on a legal-sized clipboard. I hesitated over the blank marked “Baby’s Father” before writing in Matt’s name. Then I tried to cross it out, but his name still showed through. I crumpled up the page and asked for a new one. This time I just left that part blank.