The Karma Club

by Jessica Brody

  You really can’t blame me for slamming the door in his face. Although, honestly, I didn’t have much control over that part. It was just what my muscles did. Like a knee-jerk reaction or something.

  I stood there for a few seconds on the other side of the slammed door, trying to catch my breath and make some sort of sense of what had just happened. But when I came up short on both accounts, I turned, took the stairs two at a time, and then, upon reaching the top, sprinted into my bedroom.

  “Who was that?” I heard my mom call from her reading chair in the den.

  “No one,” I shouted back coldly and then turned and slammed my second door in under a minute.

  I seriously thought that I could hide out in the safe confines of my own bedroom for the entire weekend and be left relatively alone. But it becomes painfully clear that this is wishful thinking when my mom enters my room at seven thirty in the morning on Saturday and proceeds to kidnap me.

  Okay, not in like a bag-over-my-head-, gag-in-my-mouth-, hands-tied-behind-my-back-type scenario. But I think waking me up before ten on a weekend, forcing me into the car, and not telling me where we’re going definitely constitutes some form of kidnapping.

  And when I notice an overnight bag sitting on the backseat, I can pretty much surmise that this is not going to be a simple day trip.

  “I don’t understand why you can’t tell me where we’re going,” I plead for the fifth time as we drive north along the 101 freeway and all evidence of civilization slowly fades into the background.

  “Well,” my mom says aloofly, taking a sip from her stainless steel travel coffee mug filled with herbal tea, “since you don’t have a choice, it doesn’t really matter where we’re going, does it?”

  I groan and push my head back into the headrest, silently cursing the gods for sticking me with such proactive parents. Why couldn’t my mom and dad just be normal, self-absorbed California parents? Obsessed with country club memberships and Botox. One absence from school and a few nights of wallowing alone in my room and suddenly I’m being sent away to what I can only imagine will be some sort of boot camp for heartbroken teens.

  I mean, come on! One (very justified) ditch does not a rebel make. Next thing I know I’ll be sitting on a couch across from some shrink on television being asked to explain why I choose to make such bad choices with my life. I think it’s safe to say that there’s just the slightest bit of overreacting going on around here.

  And not to mention, this is completely unfair. How am I ever supposed to learn to deal with life’s problems on my own if my parents insist on intervening the minute there’s a glitch in my perfect attendance record? How am I supposed to become a responsible, self-sufficient adult when I’m not allowed just the tiniest harmless meltdown every once in a while?

  My mom navigates through the countryside, occasionally referring to a printed-out map that she keeps folded up and out of my reach in a compartment in the driver’s-side door.

  After what feels like hours, we finally pull into the driveway of a huge, landscaped complex with, from what I can see from my obstructed view out the passenger-side window, gardens, fountains, a gazebo, and several white buildings that look similar to the one we’re currently parked in front of.

  Yep, definitely a boot camp of some kind. It looks like one of those ritzy, overpriced celebrity rehab centers that you see pictures of in the tabloids. It’s not until we get out of the car and my mom hands the keys to a waiting valet attendant that I notice a sign in front of the building’s entrance. And that’s when I know that my life is officially over.

  It’s even worse than I thought.

  Worse than boot camp for heartbroken teens. Worse than an upscale rehab center. Worse than going on TV to talk about my problems.

  “Napa Valley Spiritual Center for Inner Growth?” I ask incredulously.

  I’m not kidding. Those are the exact words on the sign. Trust me, I could not have come up with that combination of letters on my own.

  My mom opens the back door and grabs the black overnight bag off of the seat as she flashes me an exuberant smile. Ironically, it’s the exact same smile I used to get when she’d take me to the water park or the McDonald’s Playland when I was a kid. It’s that look parents give you when they’re excited because they think they’re hip and “with it” and know “what the kids are into these days.”

  “It’s the perfect place for us to relax, make peace with our pasts, and let go of negative energy,” she explains.

  I start to roll my eyes until I realize what she has just said. And my eyes stop dead in their tracks, somewhere between the corner of my right eyebrow and my forehead. “Wait a minute?” I ask in disbelief. “Us? As in me and you?”

  Her face lights up with excitement. “I thought it would be fun. You know, a mother-daughter bonding experience. Plus, I think a retreat away from everything and everyone will help you deal with some of your feelings about Mason.”

  I groan loudly. “I don’t need a spiritual retreat to do that! I need a punching bag and a carton of ice cream.”

  My mom frowns at me with disappointment sprawled across her face. “Now, you see, Maddy. That is not a healthy way to deal with this. You can’t just lock yourself in your room all week and hope to feel better when you get out.”

  “It’s a breakup, Mom. There is no healthy way to deal with it.”

  She takes a deep, patient breath and rests her hand on my shoulder. “If you’ll give this a chance, I think you’ll find that the opposite is true. Besides, you could probably benefit from some exposure to new cultures and ideas. You can’t find everything you need to know in the pages of Contempo Girl magazine.”

  I fold my arms across my chest and plant my feet firmly on the ground, attempting to give off a convincing display of resistance. “I’m not going in there.”

  My mom pouts slightly and prods me with the tip of her index finger. “Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. I signed us up for some really cool stuff. Yoga, guided meditations, and even a class on the philosophies of the Dalai Lama!”

  I look at her as if she might actually be mentally unstable, and piercing sarcasm slowly drips into my voice. “The Dalai who?”

  But my mom apparently is done arguing because she tosses the bag (which I now realize is packed with both of our essentials) over her shoulder, takes hold of my elbow, and says, “Can it, Maddy. You’re going inside.”

  And after seventeen years of being privy to this woman’s array of vocal intonations and body language, I know at that moment that spiritual enlightenment is in my very immediate future, whether I like it or not.

  The minute I walk through the door, I feel like I’ve stepped into a really weird dream. And for a moment, I secretly pray that that’s exactly what this is. And any minute now, I’ll wake up in my bed and this will all be a fleeting memory.

  This place is a perfect example of one of those things that you have to see for yourself to truly appreciate just how wacko it is. (And of course, I say “wacko” with the very deepest respect for whatever culture is being represented here.)

  The room we enter is white. And I mean the whitest white room you’ve ever seen. The walls are white, the ceiling is white, the couch in the middle of the room is white, the tile on the floor is white, even the picture frames on the walls are white. Given that this place is supposed to be somewhere people go to relax and escape their daily problems, I would assume the white is meant to put you at ease. But honestly, for me, it has the exact opposite effect. I suddenly feel extremely stressed out at the thought that I might accidentally touch something and the oil from my fingers would stand out like a fluorescent bloodstain under one of those special crime-scene lights.

  My mom and I approach the reception desk, which is, of course, white, and she gives our names to the lady sitting behind it, who is dressed head to toe in what I can only describe as a full-body sarong-toga-looking thing. In white.

  As my mom fills out a series of forms, I notice a medium-size statue si
tting on top of the desk. It’s in the shape of a golden man. He’s wearing a tall, pointed hat, long, dangling earrings, and he’s sitting cross-legged with his hands on his knees and his eyes closed. Like he’s deep in thought. Or really pissed off.

  I stare at the statue with serious skepticism. “Who is that?” I ask with just the slightest trace of rudeness in my voice.

  The woman behind the desk seems pleased by my curiosity and speaks in a fluid, soothing tone. “That is the Buddha, my child.”

  My child? Please. Can they be any more cliché right now?

  I nod, like I know exactly what she’s talking about even though I’m only faintly familiar with Buddha.

  “Isn’t he supposed to be fat?” I reply.

  My mom shoots me a warning look, but I simply smile back at her. Hey, it was her idea to come to this “enlightening” place to begin with; I might as well be “enlightened.”

  The woman is completely unfazed by my sarcastic tone. “Yes, sometimes he is depicted as what Western society deems to be fat.” She pronounces the word as if it doesn’t really exist and the only reason she’s decided to acknowledge my choice of vocabulary is so she can attempt to relate to me on some level. Kind of like when adults try to use the word dawg or homey.

  “But other depictions look like this,” she continues, patting the statue’s tall, pointed hat. “And if you rub his belly, it’s supposed to bring you good luck.”

  I take one final look at the statue and mumble, “Maybe later.”

  The next thing I know, my mom and I are following another sarong-toga-clad woman on a thirty-minute tour of the compound. Oh, sorry, I mean, “spiritual center.”

  “Many people come to our center to deal with pain, loss, stress, or a death in the family,” the woman is explaining as we make our way through “Zen Garden 2,” which looks remarkably identical to “Zen Garden 1.”

  “It’s a place where one can make peace with the world around them.”

  “It’s simply beautiful,” my mom says, taking a deep breath and acting like she’s never experienced fresh air before. She turns to me. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  I shrug. “It’s all right.”

  “Our goal here,” the woman continues, “is for everyone to leave feeling fresh and rejuvenated, having cleansed the dirt of everyday life from your soul. Like the earth feels after a purifying rainstorm.”

  The woman says this like she’s reciting poetry or something, and I have to keep myself from laughing because I know that would not go over well with my mother.

  By the end of the first day, it’s pretty safe to say that this place is not exactly geared toward my demographic. All of the classes that I reluctantly sit through are filled with two kinds of people: (1) the Northern California hippies who go to places like this for the fun of it (One man’s spiritual retreat for inner growth is another man’s amusement park) and (2) the New Age midlife crisis victims who have lost their way in the world and are looking for guidance.

  And then, of course, there’s me. The one person in the room who would rather be watching E! I’m sorry, but doing yoga in a hundred-degree room while I’m sweating my face off and feeling like I might actually pass out at any given moment is not my idea of an off-the-hook Saturday afternoon. And the 100 percent organic vegan food that they serve around here for meals (and dessert) is just about as unappetizing as it sounds.

  So when I finally crawl into the unfamiliar bed that night and pull the scratchy organic sheets up to my chin, all I can think about is how in less than twenty-four hours I’ll be back in my own room, with my own dairy-delicious food, talking to people who don’t readily use terms like oneness and self-love and the Tao (which, by the way, I’ve learned is actually pronounced with a D, begging the obvious question of why they just don’t spell it Dao.)

  Did my mom honestly think that she could drag me here and all my problems would just vanish into thin air? That after two days of folding my body into highly unnatural positions, eating cheesecake made out of tofu, and listening to people preach the wonders of inner peace, I would suddenly no longer feel the agony of Mason’s betrayal? Did she completely forget what it’s like to be in high school?

  Because no matter what happens here over the weekend, come Monday morning I will have to face it all over again. The humiliation. The rejection. The heartbreak. And the worst part, the feeling of total and utter helplessness. Knowing that what Heather and Mason did to me was wrong, but I’m completely powerless to do anything about it.

  The next morning, my mom and I are sitting in a circle of approximately fifteen people in the middle of Zen Garden 1 while an animated, middle-aged man named Rajiv, dressed in a flowing white wraparound top and matching pants, walks barefoot in the grass behind us. Every word out of his mouth seems perfectly choreographed with his position on the ground and the movement of his hands.

  “Life is a balancing act!” he says energetically in a rich and melodic Indian accent as he passes behind me. “Everything in this universe has an equal opposite.” He lays his hands out flat in front of him and then turns them over in a seeming attempt to mime the concept of opposites. Like we’ve never heard of it before.

  I look over to see my mom nodding thoughtfully, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes because here we are being lectured about how to live our lives by a man who dresses in all white a good four months after Labor Day.

  “The universe balances itself out by creating a mirror image of everything in it. And we must, too, seek to create balance in our lives.”

  I check my watch. Another two hours and I’m so out of here. Back to the real world, where meat and cheese are served on a regular basis, the men don’t wear sarong togas, and every single thought you have isn’t meant to be analyzed, cherished, and set free.

  “Fortunately,” Rajiv continues with great passion, “there are forces in the universe that help us achieve that balance.”

  I stick the tip of my index finger in my mouth and concentrate on using my teeth to smooth out an annoyingly jagged and unpolished fingernail.

  “Forces whose sole purpose is to maintain a constant equilibrium among time and space as a whole.” Rajiv gestures wildly, as if moving the air around his body will help him prove some kind of point.

  God, this nail is stubborn, I think, gnawing down on it with determination.

  “These forces have been given names throughout time. Of course, one of the most well-known and widely used names for this balancing act is Karma.”

  My finger drops from my mouth, and I stare at him with instant intrigue. There it is again. That stupid Karma thing that Jade mentioned the other day. What is it with everyone and that word?

  “But what some people like to call Karma is really just that powerful energy that brings harmony to the universe. It is the sum of all an individual has done, is currently doing, and will do. So that, in the end, universal imbalances will be balanced.”

  Hmmm, I think as I listen to him speak. The sum of everything that an individual has done and will do. Like a bank account. The net balance of your deposits and withdrawals. Anyone who makes a withdrawal from the account eventually has to also make a deposit. That seems to make sense. Although it would also mean that Mason and Heather are in serious Karma overdraft.

  Rajiv continues. “The effects of all deeds actively create past, present, and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one’s own life, and the pain and joy it brings to others.”

  Wait a minute. I stop listening for a second as I attempt to digest what he has just said. Making one responsible for one’s own life, and the pain and joy it brings to others.

  Exactly! Mason should be held responsible for what he did to me. It’s only fair. His universal imbalance should be balanced out! Exactly like this guy is saying.

  Up until now, I always thought Karma was just a convenient device to make us feel better about what’s happening in the world. You know, like what Jade said about Mason getting what’s coming to him. Bad deeds
will be punished. But maybe it goes deeper than that. Maybe the universe works like some type of giant balancing scale. Whatever you put on one side of the scale has to be evened out by placing something of the exact same weight on the other side. Otherwise, everything would be out of whack and we would all just float out into space or something.

  Is that what this guy is trying to tell us when he speaks of balance? That someday Mason really will get what’s coming to him? That he too will be balanced out and maybe, just maybe, humiliated and destroyed as I had been? In front of everyone? Yes, that would definitely make me feel a good hundred times better.

  Suddenly, this Rajiv guy is more interesting than his outfit would suggest.

  “And while Karma and the universe are busy fulfilling their responsibilities of keeping all life in balance, you too must take responsibility for instilling balance in your own life.”

  He then goes on to cite examples of how we can go about doing this. Something about taking the time to spend quality moments with loved ones, donating to people who are less fortunate, and some other ideas that I don’t quite catch because I’m far too busy thinking about what this means in the context of what has happened in the past week.

  When the workshop is over, my mom and I approach Rajiv to personally thank him for such an inspiring lecture, and I take the time to flash him a genuine smile and say, “Yes, very inspiring indeed.”

  He presses the palms of his hands together as if he’s going to start praying, but instead he simply bends at the waist and dips into a shallow bow, and it’s then that I notice the symbol hanging from a black cord around his neck.

  It’s one that I’ve seen before. Mostly hanging from the rearview mirrors of surfers’ cars or gracing bumper stickers on the backs of hippie station wagons, but I never quite understood what it meant. I always assumed it was some kind of alternative peace sign.