Enlightenment for Idiots

by Anne Cushman

  When I was finished, I handed the paperwork and my medical records from Dr. Rao’s office to the receptionist, a slim young Asian woman with a tiny gold stud in her left nostril and a nametag that said AMBER. My medical records were creased from being carried around in my backpack, stained around the edges with ayurvedic oil and spilled chai. They smelled faintly of India, a mixture of cow dung and cardamom. Amber glanced through them as she smoothed them out.

  “India, huh?” She slipped them into a folder and pressed a computer-printed tag on it. “Were you doing yoga there?”

  What was I doing there? I hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I do hot yoga,” she said. “Bikram. But you’d never get me to India. I just do it at the JCC.”

  I stepped into a cubicle and changed into a paper gown; a nurse took my blood pressure, weighed me, and disappeared. I picked up a copy of Parenting Now off a side table and glanced through an article called “Ten Ways to Make Your Unborn Baby Smarter.” “Play Mozart with headphones resting on your belly. Eat flax seed oil every day—it contains omega-3 oils, vital for proper brain development.” Okay, well, brains weren’t everything. I put the article down and began flipping through a copy of People. Tom and Katie, Jen and Vince, Brad and Angelina…It took me a while to remember who these people were and why I should care about them. But it was reassuring that their lives seemed to be as much of a mess as mine.

  The doctor finally arrived, a stern, gray-haired woman who told me I could call her Dr. Pat. “You’ve been very lucky,” she said, frowning, when I told her about my travels. She grilled me about my diet and told me she’d like to see me weigh a few more pounds. She palpated the baby through my abdomen and told me that its head was already facing downward.

  “Do you want to know whether it’s a boy or a girl?” she asked as she slid the ultrasound wand over my jellied belly.

  “I already know.”

  “Mmm. Then all I need to tell you is that your baby looks perfectly healthy.” She peered at the screen, frowning. “I do want to take a closer look at your cervix, though.”

  I lay down on my back for the internal exam, slipping my feet into the metal stirrups. Dr. Pat pulled on her rubber gloves, slipped the cold plastic speculum into me, and slid her fingers up inside, while I stared up at the white squares of the ceiling, pretending I was somewhere else. Then she drew her hand back out and pulled her glove off.

  “When you leave here,” she told me, “you need to go straight home and go to bed. And don’t get up until the baby’s born.”

  Day after day, let the Yogi practice the harmony of soul; in a secret place, in deep solitude, master of his mind, hoping for nothing, desiring nothing. Let him find a place that is pure and a seat that is restful, neither too high or too low, with sacred grass and a skin and a cloth thereon. On that seat let him rest and practice Yoga for the purification of the soul.

  —Bhagavad Gita, ca. 300 BC

  CHAPTER 24

  EFFACED?” ISHTAR SAT DOWN cross-legged at the end of my bed, gold necklaces jangling. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that my cervix is starting to thin out and spread from the weight of the baby pressing down on it. It usually happens right before the baby is born.” I was lying on my bed with all my clothes still on, my blue flannel comforter wrapped around me. My subletter, Hank, had been using my bedding; he assured me he’d washed all the sheets, but the comforter still held the faint, skunky smell of the marijuana plants he’d been growing in the corner. The smell made me feel like an intruder in my own room, as if he’d marked his territory like a cat before moving on. “Except that in my case, the baby isn’t due for another two months.”

  “Whoa, back up a couple of steps.” Ernie was standing just inside my bedroom door, a legal-sized folder of papers in his hands. “What exactly is a cervix, again?”

  “The cervix is the opening to the uterus. It’s—” I stopped. Explaining the female reproductive apparatus to a retired monk was not something I was up for right now.

  “If you step into our office, I’d be happy to show you mine,” said Ishtar obligingly.

  “No thanks.” Ernie was used to Ishtar; the offer barely registered. He waved his folder. “I’ve got a client coming in fifteen minutes.”

  “Uh-oh, I’ve got one coming in an hour.” While I was in India, Ishtar and Ernie had begun to share the same tiny home office, a converted cubby under the stairs that used to be a walk-in coat closet; he used it for insurance consultations, she used it for tantra sessions. “Be sure to get your papers out of there when you’re done. It’s very distracting for my clients to see insurance brochures lying around.”

  “Not as distracting as it is for my clients to see thongs.”

  “Oh, come on. There are worse ways to sell life insurance.” Ishtar turned back to me. “But seriously. How big a problem is this?”

  “Apparently, it only just started to efface. The doctor said that as long as I stay lying down most of the time, I should be fine. She just doesn’t want the weight of the baby to efface things any more or it could cause a premature delivery.” I hadn’t told anyone, yet, the term Dr. Pat had used: incompetent cervix. The word stung: yet another way I was failing. I hadn’t gotten enlightened. My book was a disaster. My relationship was in shambles. And now even my cervix couldn’t get it together.

  “It’s a good thing you came home, then,” said Ernie.

  Home. I looked around the room. Most of my possessions were still in boxes in the closet; the room was bare except for the bed, the empty bookcase, the door laid over two filing cabinets that served as a makeshift desk. Although I’d lived here for five years, I’d never put any energy into painting or decorating. My room had always felt temporary, a place to pause and refuel while I prepared to launch into my glorious future. But five years later, I was still trapped in the not-so-glorious present. And looking at my room with travel-fresh eyes, I saw that walls were dingy and pitted with spackling; that the shabby blinds wouldn’t open all the way; that the comforter cover was stained with coffee and ink. It was the room of a person who had been afraid to put down roots for fear that they’d just be yanked back up again.

  I shut my eyes, swamped by a tidal wave of fear and guilt. What if Maitri Ma hadn’t sent me home? What disaster had I risked for my baby, chasing enlightenment in the Himalayas? I’d looked up effaced in an online dictionary just after I got home from Dr. Pat’s office. “To eliminate or make indistinct by or as if by wearing away a surface,” the definition had read. “Also: to cause to vanish.” That was exactly how I felt: My surfaces worn away to almost nothing; my mind, like my cervix, stretched thin to the point of breaking.

  I opened my eyes and looked at Ernie. Through the window behind him, I could see a patch of gray sky and the rooftop of the house opposite. A pigeon landed on the window sill, then flapped away again. “Am I home?” I asked.

  FOR MY FIRST week on bed rest, I slept most of the time—as if I’d been waiting for months for permission to stop moving.

  I curled under the covers in fetal position on my left side, because the doctor had told me that that gave me the best blood supply to the baby. I drifted in and out of tangled dreams.

  I’M BACK in India, trying to catch a train to an ashram. But when I try to read the train schedule, the letters dissolve and the paper crumbles to ashes in my hand. I look up to find all the trains have left, and I’m standing alone on the platform in the dark.

  Instead of a baby, I’ve given birth to a litter of German shepherds, all of which I’ve named Matt. They escape from the house and I run out looking for them, running up and down the block shouting, “Matt, Matt, Matt.” “You’ve got to change their names,” Lori tells me, “or they’ll never come home.”

  I am at my mother’s funeral, but she isn’t really dead. As they lower her coffin into the ground, she calls me on her cell phone. “Let me out. I want to be a grandma,” she says.

  I GOT UP only to shower, use the b
athroom, or microwave leftovers from other people’s meals, which I ate whenever I happened to wake up: Lori’s curried squash stew at midnight; Ernie’s take-out spring rolls and Szechuan eggplant at dawn; Ishtar’s complicated salad of seaweed and sunflower sprouts for a midafternoon snack. I felt as if I were floating under water, looking at the rest of the busy world—distorted, almost unrecognizable—through the shimmering blur of its surface.

  My quest for enlightenment was over. I had given up all hope of spiritual awakening. And lying there in my bed—with nothing to do and no one to become—I was surprised to discover what a relief that was.

  “THE FIRST THING we have to do is paint.” Lori looked around my room with her hands on her hips. “A nice pale yellow or something like that. And then I’ll bring over some pictures. We can’t have you lying here looking at these horrible walls 24-7.”

  “I don’t know. The walls look okay to me.” Sometimes Lori’s certainty had the opposite effect on me than it was intended to; I wanted to argue, even when I actually agreed with her. I suspected she was actually glad I was on bedrest; it gave her a chance to remodel my whole life without me getting in the way.

  “Some cheerful curtains would help, too.” She pulled open my closet door and looked at the stack of cardboard boxes. “And we’ve got to get these unpacked.”

  “I don’t even remember what’s in them.” All my possessions had felt so important as I’d packed them up; I couldn’t choose anything I wanted to discard. Now I could throw the whole lot into the bay, unopened, and not miss a thing.

  “Well, fortunately, I labeled everything.” Lori pulled a Swiss Army knife out of her jeans pocket, popped it open, and began slicing the tape on the first box. “This one has all your yoga props in it. You’ll need these for doing restorative poses in your bed. We’ve got to keep your circulation going and your muscle tone up.”

  “Right.”

  “And we’ve also got to find you lots of good activities to keep you from getting bored. Here’s a list of ideas I printed out from Mommiesonbedrest.com.” She handed me a piece of paper. “Make lists of baby things, including baby names and things you will need for the baby like clothes, furniture, nursery supplies, and all the other baby equipment!” I read aloud. “Organize photos into albums, rearrange sock drawers or junk drawers, write letters, read books!”

  “I could also teach you to knit and you can knit a baby blanket,” said Lori.

  “Lori. My cervix has effaced. That doesn’t mean that I’ve had a total personality transplant.”

  “And, of course, now you can really focus on getting your book written.” She was piling my yoga props neatly by my bed: a bolster, a yoga mat, a strap with a metal buckle, a couple of eyebags. “There, now you can get at them without getting up.” She turned back to the closet, frowning. “Now we just have to find you something to wear. None of your old clothes will fit you, obviously. I think they have a decent maternity section at the thrift store over on Geary.”

  “I’ll be in bed all day. What does it matter what I wear? I can just hang out in a T-shirt and a pair of old sweatpants with the waistband snipped.”

  “No, no, no!” Lori slit the top of another cardboard box. “That’s the kind of thinking that makes women on bed rest go crazy. You’re supposed to get dressed in a cute outfit every morning and put on your makeup, just as if you were going to work.”

  “I’m a writer,” I said, crossly. “A T-shirt and old sweatpants is what I wear to work.”

  A week and a half into my bed rest, my confinement was starting to get old. My muscles were stiff and aching, my bones sore from pressing against the compressed cotton of my ancient futon. My room smelled like cheese puffs and dirty socks. I was afraid to check my email for fear of a barrage of messages from Maxine, who still thought I was in Gangotri, getting my picture taken with a yogini in a cave. I looked at the Mommiesonbedrest list again. “Design your own baby announcements! Host a bedrest potluck!” I crumpled up the paper and tossed it on the floor. Clearly, you’re mistaking me for someone with a competent cervix.

  “Hey, look at this!” Lori was holding up a paperback copy of Travels in Secret India. “This box has all your spiritual books in it. We can put them right by your bed to inspire you.” She began pulling them out of the box, reading the names aloud: “Awakening the Buddha Within. Being Peace. Living Your Yoga. Yoga Body, Buddha Mind. Relax and Renew.”

  With every title I got more depressed, as the mountain of ideals I hadn’t lived up to got higher and higher. “Why don’t you take them down to Bookends and trade them in for something really useful. You know—Dating on Bed Rest. How to Make a Fortune Without Standing Up.”

  “And look! Tucked in here is a catalog for a whole clothing line based on the Bhagavad Gita.” She flipped through it. “Should we order you some of these adorable Karma Capris?”

  A voice came from the hall. “Karma Capris! We knew there was a reason we came back to America!” A familiar figure was standing in the doorway. He was still barefoot, still in dreadlocks, still wrapped in a brown shawl over his lungi. In his arms, he was carrying a giant purple stuffed tyrannosaurus, which he held toward me. “Here. We got it at the airport for the baby.”

  “Devi Das!” I started to scramble up, then caught myself and collapsed back on my bed, giddy with delight. “What are you doing here? Did Maitri Ma kick you out, too?”

  “We kicked ourselves out.” He dropped the dinosaur on the bed and wrapped me in a bony hug. He smelled like a cross between a locker room and an Indian restaurant.

  “But why? Wasn’t she the real thing?”

  “Oh, she was the real thing, all right.” He sat down on the bed next to me, tucking his bare, grimy feet into full Lotus. “She was everything everyone said about her, and more. We wished so much you could have stayed there with us.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing she didn’t,” snapped Lori. She held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Lori. And for your information, Amanda’s on bed rest and in danger of going into premature labor. Sleeping on the floor of a cave at ten thousand feet isn’t exactly what the doctor ordered. What on earth were you thinking, dragging her up there?”

  “He didn’t drag me. I wanted to go. I still want to go.” I picked up the dinosaur, clutching it to my chest as if it were an emissary from Maitri Ma herself. “Devi Das, what was it like? What did you do?”

  “We didn’t really do anything. I mean, sure, we meditated a little bit. We slept in the cave while she chanted all night. We made breakfast and lunch and dinner—lentils, rice, some of Siddhartha’s freeze-dried chili. We helped her gather firewood from the forest. But mainly—it’s hard to describe—we didn’t really do anything. We just rested in this incredible…not doing. Like some knot deep inside us was being untied. We felt like we’d come home. We felt like we could have stayed there forever.”

  “So why didn’t you?” asked Lori pointedly.

  Devi Das shrugged. “We woke up one morning and knew we weren’t supposed to stay there anymore. And we knew we were supposed to be here instead. It was like knowing that the sun is warm, or the snow is cold. It wasn’t just a thought. Our whole body knew. Even our toes knew.” He wiggled his hairy toes, crusted with black calluses.

  “We wished we didn’t. We wished we’d been sure that we were supposed to stay, instead. But you can’t choose what you’re sure of.”

  He beamed at me. “We finally decided—enlightenment? Hey, we can do that anytime. They say it’s always right there. But Amanda? She’s something special.”

  He reached into his pocket and handed me a crumpled piece of paper. “Before we left, we asked Maitri Ma if she had any teachings for you. She gave us this.”

  I looked at the scrap of paper. On it was typed in blue letters: “Add salt to two cups water and bring to a boil.”

  “The other side. Sorry. All we had to write on were the instructions for Siddhartha’s ramen.”

  I turned it over. The message was written in a neat penciled cu
rsive, the o’s fat and round, each letter precisely slanted, every “i” dotted, every “t” crossed—the handwriting of a teacher at a girl’s school in Delhi.

  I left home and family to climb the mountain path

  In this snowy cave the fires burn all night long

  Let whatever swells inside you rip you to pieces

  Then you will dare to surrender your heart.

  “We hope it makes sense to you,” said Devi Das.

  I looked at him, not sure whether to laugh or cry. “As much sense as anything else in my life, I guess.”

  From: Maxine@bigdaybooks.com

  To: Amandala@yahoo.com

  Subject: Labor and delivery

  Well, I personally am delighted to hear that you’re on bed rest—at least I know how to reach you now. But really, Amanda, I have to say that with your deadline in less than four months, this isn’t the best time to turn up pregnant. I must stress that delivering a baby will not excuse you from delivering your manuscript.

  “I THINK I’VE finally figured out the key to a successful relationship.” My mother was doing tai chi in my bedroom. As soon as I’d worked up the nerve to tell her I was home, she had flown into San Francisco from Hawaii, where she had moved with her new boyfriend shortly after she returned from visiting me in India. She had come to spend a couple of weeks with me—ostensibly to help out, although so far the only helpful thing she had done was order takeout sushi, which my pregnancy books warned me direly not to eat. “Always make sure the man likes you a little bit more than you like him. And never, ever let him see you without your makeup on.”