by Sarah Bird
She lights up with the sort of incandescence that my own appearances used to spark. Sanjeev wears a slate blue Members Only jacket but not ironically. His glossy dark hair is shiny as a choirboy’s. He looks a lot better without a shower cap.
Taking a seat in the chair next to the sofa, he tells Millie, “We never finished our discussion about whether or not to assign Lute to recycling.”
“Oh, yes, I do have some further thoughts on that.”
They barely notice when I stand and motion toward the kitchen. “I’ve got to go slit my wrists.”
“Okay,” Millie chirps, never taking her eyes off Sanjeev. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
I walk around the corner into the dining room to see what clues about Sanjeev I can pick up from eavesdropping on their conversation.
“You know,” Millie starts off, “before we turn our attention to Lute and the recycling, I want to say that after our discussion yesterday, I dug out my old comparative religion textbook and did a bit of research on Hinduism and have concluded that we’re all just trying to understand Brahman and achieve moksha in our own way.”
“Oh, Millie, not you too.” Sanjeev’s Hindo-Brit accent usually makes everything he says sound both incredibly smart and incredibly chipper. But when he says, “Oh, Millie, not you too,” he sounds sad. Sad and disappointed.
“Not me too what? I’m just saying that Hinduism and Christianity aren’t that different.”
“And you mean that as a compliment.”
“Of course.”
“You don’t mean it to be patronizing and condescending to a religion that had developed a highly sophisticated theology while your lot were still painting yourselves blue.”
“Sanjeev, that is the last thing I would ever intend.”
“Of course. It’s just that I’m so tired of all the other ones, all those cheerful Christians saturated in what they believe to be tolerance and goodwill who think they are bestowing some sort of gift by perceiving similarities between their enlightened twenty-first-century Jesus cult and the poor benighted cow worshippers of the subcontinent.”
“That is not at all what I’m saying.”
“So tell me,” Sanjeev asks. “Beyond moksha and Brahman, what do you think you know about Hinduism?”
Uh-oh, the italics Sanjeev whips around “think” worry me. Millie, however, ignores the warning sign and plows right ahead.
“From what I recall when a Hindu sage lectured at seminary, Hindus believe that all religions are the same. That they all lead to the same truth. That there are many different paths, but they all guide us to the same destination.”
“Oh, Millie, that is not worthy of you. You, of all people, should know that the path is everything. If you take away angels plucking harps on clouds and seventy-two virgins waiting in paradise, nothing is left but the path.”
I do not like Sanjeev’s tone of exasperation and, frankly, I do not like Sanjeev. It is also pretty clear that he is not as into Millie as Millie is into him. Which really makes me not like him.
Who does he think he is?
“Then explain it to me, Sanjeev. Make me understand.”
I zone out as Sanjeev goes on about Hinduism being an “ocean of nectar.” About deities with the heads of monkeys and elephants. About blue gods named Kali and Lord Krishna. About a fierce goddess who drank wine and slew the buffalo demon. About mountains of golden marigolds and a festival where believers pelt one another with purple, yellow, and red powder.
“Wow,” Millie says, all rapt and crushed out. “Listening to you reminds me of when I was sick with strep throat and my aunt bought me a coloring book that I splashed with plain water and invisible colors magically appeared. It’s as if my image of religion had always been just the black-and-white outline and now you’ve filled it in with color.”
None of this is adding up to any big data bonanza for me as far as figuring out how to sway Sanjeev’s vote. So, after a quick check to make sure that Sanjeev and Millie are completely occupied paddling around the “ocean of nectar,” I zip upstairs for a peek at Sanjeev’s room.
It’s as if an ops team has scrubbed it for all signs of human life. A bed, twin, neatly made. A nightstand with a goosenecked reading lamp, a glass of water, and a small alarm clock. Is Sanjeev liberal? Conservative? Mammal? Reptile? There are no clues. Not a poster, not a CD, not an ironic T-shirt. The single solitary compass heading I get from Sanjeev’s internal landscape is a little altar tucked away in his closet. Burnt sticks of incense poke up in front of many-armed Shiva, the destroyer, Ganesh, elephant-headed remover of obstacles, and a couple others. I have already gleaned, though, that Bindi Boy is awash in subcontinental idol worship, so the altar discovery is not much help. In spite of the incense and blue gods, my greatest fear is that Sanjeev might be a pure datahead. Someone who actually listens to reason.
That would be fatal to my cause. If I have any hope at all of pandering to Sanjeev’s baser instincts, I must find out what they are. I am leafing through his Jockey shorts when I hear Sanjeev and Millie coming up the stairs. I slip out of his room. It is time to do something I truly excel at: shopping.
Like Cells in a Body
WE ARE AN INTENTIONAL community here.” Juniper is my Torquemada, my Grand Inquisitor, addressing the house meeting on why Seneca House must be cleansed of my heretical presence. She stabs a withering glance in my direction. “We chose to live together. She is the antithesis of all that we are.”
As Juniper enumerates my crimes against humanity, I peer up at the gathered. Per my predictions, Presto and Clancy, the computer phantoms, and the ganja twins, are no-shows. I study the remaining eight residents, my judge and jurors.
Jerome is using the edge of his student ID and thumbnail to pluck ingrown hairs from his weedy beard. Lute is fingering an invisible guitar and working out chord progressions to accompany lyrics he is mouthing to himself. I know I can get these two. My former employees, Doug, Olga, and Sergio, are all sitting together. That is not a voting bloc I want to see. Still, I have some ideas for turning at least one of their votes. Which would mean that with Millie I’d have the four votes I need, since house rules stipulate that a tie goes to the guest.
Of course, I worry about Sanjeev. His dreary insistence upon facts could screw my entire marketing plan. Facts are not my friends. When I tune back in, Juniper is still droning on. “The very cornerstone of our intentional community is that we all ascribe to certain principles. I mean, there are reasons we didn’t pledge Kappa Alpha Theta.”
Jenna Bush’s sorority? Dream effing on!
On the best day of any of their lives, the Kappa Alpha Thetas would never have taken a single one of these losers. The mere mention of UT’s premier sorority triggers a delicious memory. During its heyday, Wretched Xcess coordinated the chapter’s big anniversary bash. Rather than roach spray and mildew, their house smelled of Jo Malone cologne, lilies, and the estrual funk of a couple dozen synchronized menstrual cycles. A bass note of roast beef coming from the kitchen added a comforting smell of home, of the daddy bucks that nourished every squeal and giggle bubbling through the house. The help, black butlers in white gloves, maids in starched aprons, all moved silently, invisible as Bunraku puppeteers that convention has trained the eye not to see.
Oh, to have partied with Jenna. Oh, to have been a Kappa Alpha Theta legacy with my place in the world assured from birth. Oh, to have been so certain of that place that, well in advance of my twenty-first birthday, I wouldn’t slink into a bar and timidly proffer the fake ID. Instead, I would have demanded—demanded!—to be served. And not once but on two separate occasions. How different my life would have been with that level of confidence. That and the media team to back it up.
Sigh.
“Blythe? Blythe?”
Millie’s voice breaks into my fantasy.
“Huh? Yes!” I snap to. All eyes are on me.
“Did you want to say a few words?”
I jump to my feet so that the jur
y can fully soak in my outfit designed to suck up to every tendency—hipster and non—that I have uncovered. I rub a gnarly knit cap against hair that I have prepped with a little baby oil for the very winning not-washed-in-two-weeks look. Next I wind a twelve-foot muffler a bit tighter about my neck, then unbutton my blue polyester Pep Boys short-sleeved shirt with BOB stitched over the pocket to reveal a vintage Smokey and the Bandit T-shirt underneath. Finally, I adjust my Hello Kitty stretch bracelet and make sure the fake nose stud I pasted on is still in place. (Amazing what a person can find at Goodwill. Even more amazing what a person can simply put on and walk out wearing without paying for. I consider my shoplifted items to be a loan. One I will pay back with generous interest the moment I am back on my feet.)
Feeling the room warming a bit, I open with an all-purpose, “Mistakes were made. I’m not denying that.”
“‘Mistakes??’” Juniper sputters. “A ‘mistake’ is using the wrong fork at dinner. A ‘mistake’ is not writing your aunt a thank-you note. Not paying your workers and feeding unsuspecting party guests a date rape drug are not ‘mistakes.’”
“Point taken,” I admit. “Guilty on all charges.” There is no way I am going to win by arguing “facts” with Juniper. My one slender hope is visuals, sound bites, hot buttons, and random digressions. I turn to Lute and Jerome and bombard them with an asteroid of a non sequitur: “I have no excuse for my actions except that I just love Daniel Johnston and Roky Erickson so much that I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Lute and Jerome turn to each other and their mouths drop open in unison.
Eureka!
Daniel J. and Roky are Austin’s premier burnout music legends. What could be more authentic, more unquestionably not sellout than guys who ended up gobbling Thorazine in Austin State Hospital? And how both heart-meltingly sincere and fashion-forward ironic to worship musicians who live in their mom’s garage? Did it take a genius to deduce that these cult gods would be Jerome and Lute’s idols and points of absolute intersection? Probably.
“Huh? What the hell are you talking about?” Juniper asks, as earnest a little nerd as her favorite candidate of all time, Ralph Nader. “You’re not making any sense.”
Sense, I have no interest in making sense. I am making points. Big ones, judging by the warm bath of eye contact I am enjoying from both members of THE Fresh ’n’ Fruity. As Juniper blathers on about Seneca House being “an interwoven, interdependent community” I evaluate my po sition. I am getting the blatant pandering portion of my program under control. Even better, I catch Sanjeev in an unguarded moment, staring at Millie while her attention is elsewhere. For the first time, I see clearly what I can’t believe I missed earlier: Millie’s crush on Sanjeev is reciprocated. Adoration beams from his sacred-cow brown eyes as he gazes upon her. It is written on every curry-soaked pore.
This is great. Sanjeev’s gaze is googly-eyed enough that I’m pretty sure he will vote me in just to please Millie. This prospect cheers me so much I can barely pay attention to Juniper as she drones on. “You may think that this is just some dumb hippie platitude, but I believe that we are all one. Like cells in a body. And Blythe Young is a cancer.”
I sneak a peek at Millie. Surely she will object. She doesn’t. In fact, she’s giving me a look that actually seems to be judgmental. I didn’t think liberals were allowed to do judgmental. Has someone changed the code on me? Panic stabs me with the fear that, like Al Gore, in my rush to be all things to all people, I might have lost my home state.
I run into the kitchen and reappear a moment later with the snacks I’d genetically engineered earlier in the day to appeal to my target constituency: chocolate-chip Rice Krispies Treats. They have retro-dork coolness for the hipsters who can only enjoy food they can laugh at or express political stances through. Plus there is chocolate, which all females require.
Juniper objects to this rank electioneering, but no one can hear her over the plague-of-locusts-level crunching. More and more, Juniper’s whiny stridency and appeals to reason are making her seem like someone it would not be fun to have a beer with. And since Fun to have a beer with? is the single most important question the American electorate asks, Juniper is currently losing this campaign.
“Anyway, y’all,” I snivel. “It’s too bad I probably won’t be hanging with all y’all anymore, cuz when I was mixing up these Krispies deals, it really made me want to try out some of my fancier recipes. I have this killer crème brûlée I would have loved to do for you. This awesome Chocolate Intemperance. An amazing vindaloo. An incredible meat pie and Vegemite on toast. A veganalicious grilled tofu cutlet with pesto–pumpkin seed sauce. Did I mention the Chocolate Intemperance?” Indian, Australian, vegan, and female, I pander to as many culinary demographics as I can identify.
For a bunch fed on groats and lentils this is crack cocaine. They look up at me with longing so unrestrained it is like staring at eight Homer Simpsons all thinking about doughnuts. Framing. Framing is all. I choose my words carefully, waiting until the last chocolate-drenched Krispie is gone and they are facing a future devoid of succulent goodies before I offer them the veil issue. “Of course, if you want to let someone else tell you what you can and cannot eat that’s fine. If you want to give up your freedom to choose, to control your own bodies, that’s cool.”
With any luck, I have made a vote for Chocolate Intemperance into a vote for individual rights, for the hearty free-range American pioneer spirit with a little pro-choice tucked in as well. I can feel a consensus building. No, I can smell it building and it smells like the Aztecs’ gift to me. It smells like cocoa.
“That is so not what this meeting is about,” Juniper says in a dismissive, high-handed way. High-handed and dismissive, that is good. That is so not fun to have a beer with.
Olga wipes chocolate from her hands, then tears up strips of notebook paper. “We are voting now, da?”
When, without so much as a glance in my direction, Millie asks, “Blythe, will you wait outside?” I know I am in a new and unforeseen pickle. Anytime the jury won’t look you in the eye, the only choice left is top or bottom bunk.
I must take drastic corrective measures. “Y’all,” I whimper. “You know what? You don’t need to have a secret vote. I’ve made a lot of mistakes and all I want now is to know how I can be a better person. I just want to learn from y’all. Every single one of all y’all.”
What I want to learn is that Millie and Bindi Boy aren’t going to bounce my ass back to Dog Crap Lane. There is no way on God’s green earth that Millie Ott of Waco, Texas, will ever vote me, Charles Manson, or Idi Amin out if she has to do it to our faces. Period. Nonnegotiable. Make nice is embedded too deeply in an Old School Texas girl like Millie. Secret ballot, no question, I’m gone. But to my face, never happen.
I have to get the rabble behind an open vote. I need to invoke some Christians/lions bloodlust. I know that, secretly, they all want their very own home version of Survivor. They want a gruesome nine-person ego pileup to rubberneck. They just don’t want to admit they want it. I have to give them a smoke screen, make them take the veil.
“It will be, like, a learning experience for me to hear what y’all have to say.”
Learning experience. What good little liberal can resist a learning experience?
“Hand count for an open vote,” Jerome proposes.
Millie and Juniper are the only ones who don’t shoot a paw high into the air, fingers waggling greedily.
Juniper surrenders. “Okay, whatever, we’ll go around the room. Everyone say how they’re voting and, if you want, tell why.”
Lute and Jerome are up first. I hum “You’re Gonna Miss Me.” The boys join in on Roky Erickson’s masterwork from the 13th Floor Elevators with a little air guitar and drum work, shrug, and vote me in. Their exit-polling data consist of two words, “Why not?”
Not surprisingly, Juniper gives me a gigando thumbs-down. “Where do I begin?” is all she will say by way of explanation.
As
predicted, Olga follows suit, offering the very succinct, “I hate the bitch.”
“Sergio?”
With a world-weary shrug Sergio votes against me, citing his own personal life philosophy, “Sometimes you get the elebator, sometimes you get the shaft.”
“Doug?”
Not wanting to make this any harder than it has to be for Doug, who did, after all, try to pay me back, I look away and don’t turn back until Juniper asks, “Doug, why is your thumb up?”
“It’s okay with me if she stays.”
“What? This is not what we talked about.”
“I know, but I’ve been where she’s at.”
“Exactly. And you sold everything you owned, moved into a co-op boardinghouse, and tried to pay everyone back.”
“That’s me. We all went a little crazy. Got greedy. Everyone handled it differently.” Doug keeps his thumb up until Juniper very reluctantly records his vote.
For a moment I am stunned by Doug’s magnaminity. And then I want to jump up and down screaming with joy because I am in! As soon as Millie, who is next in the batting lineup, votes for me I will have my four votes and I am in. Thank God, Sanjeev isn’t the next voter.
Juniper speaks. “As decided in the House Chaplain Open Voting Rule, so as not to sway anyone by force of moral authority, Millie will go last. Sanjeev?”
“What?” I demand. “Robert’s Rules of Order! Millie is the next voter.”
“Can someone shut her up?” Juniper inquires. “Sanjeev?”
I interrupt, “I just have one question before Sanjeev votes.”
“What?” Juniper asks, her usual tone of peevishness spiking dangerously.
I ignore her and face Sanjeev. “I am just wondering, Sanjeev, do you hate the Pakistanis as much as I do?”
From the looks that Sanjeev and Millie exchange—exasperated, sad to be proved right—I see that if I ever had any kind of hand, I have just seriously overplayed it.
