Soulmates

by Jessica Grose

  I had to try my hardest not to laugh. When Beth and I played Ouija board when we were children, I always tricked her into thinking our dead grandmother was behind the board, answering her questions and planning on haunting her forever. This felt like it had as much credence as the Ouija board.

  My mouth was twitching with the effort of suppressing a smile when my hand quivered from nerves. I lowered my hand, scooped up a crystal, and opened my eyes.

  “Just as I suspected,” Gaia said. “Orange kyanite.”

  “What does orange kyanite mean?” I asked, looking at the splintered crystal in my hand.

  “Your sacral chakra is severely blocked. I could feel it as soon as you walked in the door. This just confirms it for me.”

  “My what?” In spite of myself, I was sort of angry. How dare this woman judge my sacral chakra! Lo hadn’t said anything about that.

  “Your sacral chakra,” Gaia explained, “is located in your lower abdomen. Right here.” She pointed below her belly button. “The sacral chakra is what allows us to be open to new experiences and new relationships, and I am feeling that yours is almost completely blocked.” She shook her head.

  I felt like I had just failed a final exam. I knew she was talking nonsense, but I really, really hated not succeeding. “Is there anything I can do to fix it?” I asked, not quite believing I was engaging in this.

  “Of course,” Gaia said in a sweet voice. “We’ll start with doing some initial energy work here, and then I will confer with Lama Yoni about the best coursework to help you unblock. Please lie down.”

  She spoke with such calm authority that I lay down immediately and instinctively closed my eyes. My heart beat a little faster knowing that she was going to mention me to Yoni. My interactions with him so far at Zuni had been distant—I was just one of hundreds of students there. This felt more intimate and even invasive. I tried calming my increasing anxiety by clenching and releasing my fists, which was a movement so small, I hoped Gaia wouldn’t notice.

  Gaia knelt by my hips and placed her hands over them. She rotated her hands to the right, and then put them back over the center of my hips, then repeated this action five or six times. I heard her take something out of her pocket and suddenly smelled a strong citrus scent right below my nose. “This is bergamot essential oil,” Gaia explained. “It will help with your unblocking process.”

  I felt her hands rubbing my temples. The citrus smell still hung in the air. I knew that I should be skeptical, but I couldn’t help but relax. Gaia’s presence was that soothing.

  Gaia finished her temple massage with a bit of a head scratch. “Take your time getting up,” she told me. “When you feel ready, you may leave. Someone will meet you to lead you to your lodgings. Namaste.” I opened my eyes in time to see her put her hands together and bow to me, then slip out a door, partially camouflaged by a wall hanging in the back of the room, that I hadn’t even noticed was there.

  I didn’t want to get in trouble for leaving too quickly. Maybe they would think I wasn’t reflecting sufficiently on my energy levels if I left the room too soon. So I waited there with my eyes closed for an indeterminate amount of time until I heard the door open. I turned my head to the noise and saw Janus entering the room, so I sat up. “Let’s go to your room,” he said.

  I felt unsteady on my legs, like I had just stepped off a boat, and I appreciated Janus’s slow pace this time. We walked along a corridor. I couldn’t tell whether it was the same corridor we came up; they all looked the same to me, with the terra-cotta walls and the unfamiliar gods and goddesses. There were doors every few feet, all closed. Finally, after about a ten-minute walk, we stopped at an orange door.

  “This is where you will be staying. You have been paired with the roommate who we believe will aid your spiritual development most completely,” Janus said. I started to roll my eyes internally, but then I realized the spiritual jargon here was no stranger than the way we spoke to each other at my office, with terms like circle back and bandwidth and run it up the flagpole.

  Janus carefully opened the door. It was a lovely, if spartan, room. There were two full beds, each with a bright white bedspread patterned with gold and orange throw pillows. The wall art—two more deities, sitting on opposite white walls—was also tinged with orange. The room was about 50 percent more upscale than my room at the Zuni Retreat.

  A woman was sitting on one of the beds, concentrating deeply on a book. She looked up at us. She did not seem particularly happy to see me. “Willow, this is Dana. I trust you will make her feel at home?” Janus said.

  Willow nodded tersely and plastered a fake smile on her face. She had tiny blue eyes that turned into narrow slits with this insincere grin. She wasn’t quite as fit as the other people I’d met so far, though she was still young and still pretty. She wore standard-issue black yoga pants and a form-fitting top, and she surveyed me from head to toe like she was sizing up her competition. I was not getting Sylvia vibes from her at all.

  “Sorry to have interrupted your reading,” I said.

  “I will leave you now to get settled,” Janus said. “Please note that we’re still in our midday silence, which means that only fully realized residents can speak. It’s something you have to earn.”

  I nodded back in assent.

  “Namaste,” Janus said, then bowed and left me alone with Willow. Willow turned back to her book as if I weren’t there. I started unpacking my bag to occupy my hands and unquiet mind.

  When I brought my toiletries into the bathroom I decided to take a shower. The shower was beautiful, maybe the most beautiful I’d ever seen. It was an open stall made of wood, with a rainforest showerhead, and it was stocked with half-empty bottles of Dr. Bronner’s products. I assumed these were provided by the retreat; for $20,000 a month the least they could do was provide us with toiletries. I used them liberally on my hair and body. There were two clean but slightly frayed towels folded neatly next to the shower. I took the top one and used it to dry off.

  I came out of the bathroom in my towel and Willow shot me a look of death. I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with her, so I smiled back at her scowl, grabbed my clothes, and tiptoed back into the bathroom to change. When I came out again, Willow was gone.

  Since I had no one to talk to and had no idea how to get anywhere anyway, I lay down and fell asleep as soon as I was supine.

  I was startled awake by a knock on the door, and Janus walked in before I could say anything or get up. “Good evening. I’m here to take you to dinner.”

  I rubbed my eyes and sat up. I wiped the drool from my mouth, embarrassed to be seen in this state. “Can I have a minute to freshen up?”

  “I’m sorry, no.” Janus’s voice was firm but kind. “It’s time for dinner and we always eat as a community.”

  I got up and went to put my shoes on, but Janus shook his head. “You won’t need those while you’re here.” I put them down and sidled up to him. He turned and started walking away, clearly meaning for me to follow him. “It’s important for you to learn the rules here,” he said crisply. “That’s a big part of our intentional community: everyone must put the ‘we’ before the ‘I.’”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m committed to the community wholeheartedly.” Wasn’t that what he wanted me to say?

  Janus stopped walking and turned toward me. “I heard about your energy blockage, and I want to make sure you’re doing everything possible to overcome it.”

  Shouldn’t energy practitioners be like doctors and keep their mouths shut about their clients’ personal information? Where was my guru-patient confidentiality? I swallowed a flare of rage and plastered a thin-lipped smile on my face. Why had I wanted to come back here, again? “I understand. I’m so, so sorry. It means everything to me that I am part of this thriving community.”

  “Good,” Janus said, turning back around. I followed him wordlessly through the terra-cotta corridors until they opened up into a huge, airy room with four long tables i
n it. There must have been a hundred people there, all sitting with their hands in prayer position and their heads bowed. About a fifth of them were in lavender, and the rest were in upscale yoga clothes like the ones Willow wore. The vast majority of them were under thirty-five, and there were more women than men, but not by a huge margin.

  I could see there was just one open spot, on the end of one of the long tables, right next to Willow. Janus gestured for me to sit there, and so I did. Like everyone else, I put my hands in prayer position and bowed my head.

  We sat without speaking for several minutes. My mind raced with memories of Ethan and snippets of what had happened to me since I arrived at the Homestead. I could almost hear the gears of my brain whirring, trying to figure out the subtext to my energy reading and to the mannered language Janus spoke. But it couldn’t be jammed together in any way that told a coherent story. It was like trying to put together Ikea furniture: frustrating, and there was always a missing piece.

  The thoughts were so agitating, I was about to jump out of my skin when I was saved by a booming voice. “It is now time for our evening sermon.” I could hear the people at my table moving, so I figured it was okay to lift my head. The voice came from a man in his forties who was wearing lavender and standing at the head of one of the center tables. From a door on the left side of the room, Yoni emerged. He was wearing dark purple instead of lavender, and his white hair was gathered into a shiny bun atop his head. He walked slowly and deliberately until he reached a slightly raised platform at the front of the room. He was still attractive. A silver fox with burnished skin. Even before he opened his mouth, the charisma wafted off of him. You wanted to watch this man—or at least I did. I felt some combination of lust and shame. I was supposed to suspect him, not want him.

  Yoni just stood there for a minute, taking us all in. I swore he made eye contact with me, but I blushed and looked down at my plate. “Namaste, children,” he said at last. His voice was unremarkable. It sounded like the voice of every middle-aged male colleague I had at the law firm.

  “Tonight I want to tell you the story of a mischievous llama.” Yoni paused, put his hands behind his back, and started pacing around the platform. “This llama was the smartest animal in the barnyard. Now, llamas are very clever animals to begin with, and that’s why they are easy to train.” Another pause. “But this llama outshone her kin. While her brothers and sisters would follow the commands of their master, this llama would only pretend to follow the commands. She’d secretly go her own way. She would sneak scraps out of the food bin, and extra sips from the trough.” His voice became more powerful as he got going with his parable. The entire room was rapt. I realized that Yoni had many oratorical tricks I hadn’t picked up on the first time I met him. His use of pauses in particular made you want to hang on every word.

  “One day, the farmer left the gate open for a few minutes, because he had to bring medicine to one of the other llamas. The clever llama saw her opportunity and ran for the hills.” Yoni stopped pacing and smiled. “She ran up into the mountains, where she relished her new freedom. But then the sun set, and the llama got very cold without her brothers and sisters to keep her warm. She had never been on her own before, so she did not know how to forage for food. She wasn’t used to the ragged terrain in the mountains, so she slipped and broke a leg. She could not be saved because she was all alone.” That final sentence hung in the air for a long moment before Yoni said, “Namaste.” He bowed to the crowd and exited through the same door he’d entered from.

  I couldn’t help wondering if that parable was really about Ethan and Amaya—a veiled warning not to stray? I didn’t have time to parse it before communal bowls of food started going around. I spooned a helping of the mystery dish onto my plate. It was brown and lumpy, and when I looked closely, it appeared to be a mélange of lentils, carrots, and tofu in some kind of sauce. It seemed just like the food at Zuni.

  “Ooh, red lentils!” Willow exclaimed, sounding like a totally different person than the sour woman who had glared at me earlier. “These are supposed to be great for my solar plexus chakra. Gaia was telling me all about it.” This sounded like a brag—like she’d had a private audience with Gaia and wanted everyone to know.

  The other members of the table immediately chimed in. “Well, Gaia told me that brown foods were not that good for clearing blockages,” one man in his thirties said.

  “Sage said that carrots are excellent for balancing your energy,” another woman added, as if this won the discussion. I made a mental note about carrots.

  I scanned the room to see if I could find Lo. She must be here, I figured, since she was responsible for my return. I found her with two other women roughly her age, and was surprised by the wave of relief that rolled over me at seeing her familiar face. Lo and her friends seemed to be the only elderly people at the Homestead. They were all wearing lavender, but their outfits were a shade darker than everyone else’s, except for Yoni’s, of course. They seemed set apart from the crowd, and very focused on one another. I could hear laughter from their corner above the din. I tried to catch Lo’s eye so I could send her a little wave, but she was completely caught up in her conversation.

  I turned back to my table and tried to make eye contact there. None of the people at my table introduced themselves or even bothered to look in my direction. They continued to prattle on about their chakras and their ins with various community members. Finally, after ignoring me the entire meal, Willow threw me a bone. “I’m sorry about being a little unfriendly before,” she said. “I am just starting to have some breakthroughs on my spiritual journey, and I can’t afford any setbacks.”

  “That’s okay. I have so much to learn from you,” I told her. I figured flattery was a good option. Though I wasn’t really clear how being friendly to me would set her back on her “spiritual journey.”

  “You’ll pick things up,” Willow said.

  “I hope so,” I said, nodding vigorously.

  Willow finished her meal and moved to get up from the bench. “There are several after-dinner activities you can partake in. Ordained members all teach classes or workshops—each one of them has something different to teach us. There’s meditation on the south patio, and Sarai leads an evening lecture on orgasmic nutrition in the Pima yurt.”

  God help me, even if I did want to listen to a lecture on orgasmic nutrition, I knew I would never find the Pima yurt on my own. “Is there a map of the grounds or something that I can look at?”

  Willow shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. You need to follow your inner compass. Once you are more open to your surroundings, you will be able to access that compass.” She said this as if I were so painfully misguided, it hurt her to explain it to me.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  She wrinkled her nose. “I am going to walk the grounds to open my airways.”

  She didn’t invite me, but she didn’t explicitly tell me not to come with her, so I trotted along after her like a pesky kid sister. We walked in silence for fifteen minutes. It was getting dark, so I focused on my feet and the path in front of me. The air was clear and crisp, and I could feel the temperature drop as the sun slid farther and farther behind the mountains.

  Finally, Willow turned to me and asked, “What brought you here?”

  “I, uh, I was feeling really empty,” I said, caught off guard. “I needed something big to change. Then I got a call out of the blue that I had been recommended for this next-level retreat, and it seemed like everything was falling into place.” As soon as I finished speaking, I felt exposed. Because it was true.

  Willow nodded, looking vaguely sympathetic for the first time. “I relate to that completely,” she said. “I, too, am a refugee from the outside world. I wanted to go someplace where I would not be monitored by our Big Brother government.” She gestured up to the sky.

  I thought she sounded bonkers, but I smiled anyway. “I’m really looking forward to disconnecting from negative energy.”


  She smiled and nodded. “We have a lot in common, sister. I feel as if it is fate that we have been joined. When we get back to the room, I will do our charts and we can figure out how we can best compliment each other on our respective spiritual journeys.”

  “That sounds lovely,” I said. Willow led me back to our room, and I tried to take in my surroundings so that I would be able to find my way on my own. I’m not sure it sank in, though; each bush looked like every other bush, and there weren’t many man-made landmarks to help me along.

  Back in the room, Willow pulled out a complex chart that looked like a wheel with many, many spokes. I gave her my birth date and year and found I was genuinely curious about what she would say. She examined the chart for several minutes, making light grunting noises as if this was a major intellectual effort, then started flipping between the chart and a book she had with her. I couldn’t see the title when she opened it, but it had a huge, groovy sun on the cover.

  At last she murmured, “You are a Taurus with a moon in Cancer, and I am a Gemini with a moon in Virgo.” She said this with a little hesitation, like she was a doctor telling me I had a slightly suspicious-looking mole.

  “Is that bad?”

  “It’s complex. You are good at accepting different viewpoints, but you sometimes lack conviction and can be negative. Also, your chart says you will have a rough time transitioning to new experiences, because your major source of stability is your family.”

  At first I was mildly offended. But then I remembered that it was total mumbo jumbo. Me, lack conviction? What nonsense. I masked my negativity, though, because I didn’t want to conform to the stereotypical Taurus. “How fascinating. What are the qualities of a Gemini with a Virgo moon?”

  “I can be extremely bossy, and I have trouble listening to other people.” Normally, this would be a nightmare in a roommate, but in this case, I thought, it could be a blessing. She’d get off on being the knowledgeable one, and would be excited to teach me things about the Homestead. I could pretend to be far meeker than I actually am.