Karma for Beginners, page 12
Aside from my brief moments of rebellion-via-hamburger, which were mostly only satisfying because they made my mother mad, I’ve never had the chance to really think about it. I don’t even know what I want. Given the choice to do whatever I wanted—totally outside of my mom—what would I do?
“Is it good?”
“Steak? Yeah. Steak is super good. You ever had a burger?” He holds out his half-eaten Big Mac, shedding special sauce and lettuce out the sides.
“Yeah, I’ve had hamburgers. Thanks.” I laugh. “I mean, I’ve eaten meat a little. But not much. My mom always gets pissed.”
“That is weird, man. Anyone ever tell you that your mom is weird?”
And you know what? I realize: nobody has ever told me that my mom is weird. They’ve only ever told me I am. All the stuff I’ve always gotten shit for—hijiki, kale, and six-grain bread, hand-me-downs and no TV, “emotional word pictures” and “processing” and Hindu chants—that’s all her. None of it is me.
“Nope. No one’s ever told me that she’s weird.”
“Really?” he says, surprised. “Well, I’m here to let you know.”
He grins. I laugh. And finally exhale.
After we’ve been kissing for a while, necks craned across the space between our seats, I start to get a little sore. I guess he does too, because he reaches for my waist and pulls at me. I stumble, clumsy. He doesn’t notice. Finally I tumble over onto him, smushed against the steering wheel, straddling his lap. I’m afraid my butt’s going to accidentally honk the horn, but then he shifts his seat backward and I settle in, one leg by the gearshift, the other squeezed between the driver’s seat and the door.
This whole last week it was always sweet, and soft. He’d rest a hand between my ribs, his kiss saying, Shh, it’s okay, you’re safe. Suddenly it’s like safe stopped mattering. To him, at least. Even though we just finished eating, he seems hungry, grabbing my hips. He kisses me like he’s looking for something inside my mouth. I press down against him, bite his lip. When my hips hit the steering wheel and honk the horn we both laugh, and then we grab at each other again.
We drive back full and happy, listening to XTC. Tomorrow is my birthday. This is the best fifteenth-birthday present I could get, better than anything you could wrap or hold.
“It’s my birthday tomorrow,” I tell him. I’m not saying it so he’ll do something special; I just feel like he should know. I don’t remind him of how old I’m turning.
“Really?” he says, surprised. “Man, aw, crap!” “What?” “I’ve got a job tomorrow, working on some cars in town.” “That’s okay.” It really is.
“You sure? You should’ve told me earlier, I would’ve done something. Man, I feel bad.”
“No, no, don’t. It’s cool. I’m sure my mom will want to hang out anyway.”
“Right.” He pauses, squints at me, remembering I’m a kid. I don’t want him to remember that. I want to make him forget. I try to sound cooler.
“I totally have plans.”
He stops squinting. “Okay. You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll be back to pick you up day after,” he says. “Promise.”
I like the sound of that word.
It’s practically night when we pull into the ashram. Headlights cut through dusty air and the dark makes Colin brave or careless, because he pulls all the way up to the main entrance and kisses me before the stereo’s even off.
“Happy birthday, Tess.” He smirks into my eyes like it’s still part of the kiss, and a shiver goes all the way down my spine into my toes.
Back in our room, I’m supposed to be sleeping, but Colin lent me his Dire Straits T-shirt and it rubs the thought of him against my skin, keeping me awake. My mom just sits on her bed, oblivious. The world inside my head is so alive and big; I can’t believe the only thing keeping it from leaking out into this room is the closed seam of my mouth.
I’ll get a lecture about silence if I listen to tapes, so I just lie there and wonder if my mom’s going to say anything about my birthday. She usually starts talking about it the night before, counting down to midnight. But she just scribbles in her red silk journal in the glow of her bedside light, blankets pulled over her lap. Her mouth twitches at the corners as she writes, smiling at some secret tucked inside the envelope of her. The expression on her face feels familiar. For a second I don’t know why, and then I realize: her face looks how I feel about Colin.
After a while I hear the scribbling stop, her notebook close. I slit my eyes and watch her through a screen of lashes. She looks over at me, furtive, studying my face to make sure that I’m asleep. I slow my breathing, make the rhythm even; I heard once that how fast you breathe is how someone can tell whether or not you’re really sleeping. When she’s finally satisfied I’m not going to wake up, she pulls the covers off, stands up, and slips her sandals on. She’s not in her pajamas. She’s wearing this fancy silk dress that clings to her, all white, embroidered at the hems. I’ve never seen that dress before. She switches off the light and leaves the room.
It’s weird she didn’t say anything about my birthday. And it’s even weirder that she just snuck out. It makes me itchy, anxious like ants on my skin, and I suddenly remember all these things. Like waking up at four a.m. because of thunder and walking down our hall and she wasn’t there. Like waiting on the sidewalk after school until the sun sank and it started getting cold. Like getting yelled at for complaining that she was leaving overnight to take a crystal healing workshop, and how I stayed up in our empty house that weekend, afraid to go to sleep alone. If I knew Colin’s number I’d go straight to the pay phone by the dining hall and let it ring till he woke up. He’d answer bleary, and I’d say, I need you; come and get me in the bus. It’d be okay. She isn’t here. She wouldn’t notice I was gone.
. . . . .
Sleep finally floods in, thick dark liquid filling up the spaces. But daylight opens them again and I wake up with a hole in my ribs. Her bed is empty, but I hear the shower running. Anger rises in my throat.
I want to tell her. I want to tell her I saw her and ask her why she left without explaining. I want to say I know she’s keeping secrets, breaking rules; that she can’t just leave me here and go someplace she’s not supposed to go. I sit up, blood flooding my veins, ready to turn the tables on her. .
But then I realize—she could say all those same things back to me, and they’d all be true. If I want to keep my own secrets, I can’t get too close to hers. So I make a vow: I will pretend everything is normal, and I will take all the spaces that she makes in me and fill them up with Colin. I won’t ask her anything. She’ll come out of the shower and say happy birthday and ask me how it feels to turn fifteen, and that is all we’ll talk about.
“Howdja sleep, Tess?” she asks, stepping out of the steam.
I wait for the happy birthday part.
It doesn’t come.
I look down at my sheets and tell her, “Great.”
“Cool.” She smiles.
And that’s it.
She forgot. I can’t believe she forgot. She has never forgotten before, not ever. Granted, there aren’t calendars at the ashram, but how can your own mom forget your birthday? My eyes sting and fill up. Forget it. I’m not going to wait around for her to remember, and I’m certainly not going to remind her myself. I swear, the next time I see Colin I am asking for his phone number and tattooing it on my leg.
FOURTEEN
. . .
At a certain point the path will break you open. There is nothing to do but give way.
She never remembered my birthday. After a few days, I got tired of waiting and decided to just forget it. Nothing came from my dad either. Of course.
Now she rushes into the room, breathless, hair loose around her face. “Tessa!” she exclaims. I close my notebook, tuck my pencil in the spiral. There is clearly going to be a conversation; I’m not going to have a choice.
She plops down on the bed across from me. I raise my eyebrows. “Yes?”
“Tessa, guess what!” she barrels on.
I wish she’d just spit whatever it is out and get it over with, instead of making me ask what. “What?”
“I got a name!”
Great.
“Cool, Mom, what’s your name?” It’s like there is some kind of script of everything I’m supposed to say, and somehow I’ve memorized it without even noticing.
“Guhahita Prapati!” I knew it would be weird, but that is over the top. “Guha-what?”
“Guhahita Prapati,” she says, stressing all the syllables like I don’t speak English. Or Sanskrit. Which I don’t, but you know what I mean.
Pause. “Well, do you want to know what it means?”
“Sure.” Of course, I don’t want to know what it means. I wish she would quit making me act like I’m interested; it obviously doesn’t matter to her whether or not I actually am.
“It means ‘total surrender, in a secret place in the heart.’” She beams like the football captain asked her to the prom or something.
“Awesome.” That’s what the banana-clip girls say about the prom.
“I know, isn’t it?” She giggles. “So that’s what you can call me!”
“What?” Now I really am asking.
“You can call me it! You know, instead of Mom.”
“Wait. You want me to stop calling you Mom?”
She looks at me like, Duh. “Well, yeah!”
“Um, no.”
That stops her. Her face drops. “What do you mean, no?” she asks, like she can’t believe it.
“I mean no,” I say, like it’s completely obvious, which it is.
She just stares at me.
“I’m not calling you Guhahita Prapati.”
Her cheeks turn pink. “Why not?”
“Because, Mom, you’re my mom! That’s why! And anyway, it’s not even your real name.”
She’s trying to sit on her rapidly increasing irritation, but I know that flicker in her eyes. “Tessa,” she says, holding up a mask of calm and condescension, “that is, in fact, my real name now. In fact,” she says again, “it’s more real than the name of Sarah. It’s my spiritual name. That means it’s actually always been my name. The Guru gave it to me.”
“Yeah? Well, how has it always been your name if the Guru just gave it to you?”
She looks at me like I’m stupid. “The Guru didn’t make it up, Tessa, he just recognized it. On the spiritual plane, it’s been my name since the first moment of this incarnation.”
“That doesn’t even make sense, Mom. A name is just what people call you. It’s not you. If nobody called you that, it wasn’t your name.”
“That’s not true!”
I just look at her.
“Okay, you see that tree?” She points out the window. “That’s actually an elm tree. That’s what it is. If someone accidentally called it an oak tree, that wouldn’t make it an oak tree, would it?”
“No, but someone calling it an elm tree doesn’t make it an elm tree either. It just is what it is, no matter what anybody calls it. You’re not Guhahita Prapati. You’re just you.”
“Look, Tessa,” she says, exasperated, “I’m not going to argue philosophical points with you. The truth is on a totally different plane from conceptual debates, so there isn’t even any point. Just call me Guhahita, please.” She says please like a command.
I am not going to give in on this, though. It’s too much. I’m sick of feeling like she wants to be someone else besides my mom. Like the entire fact that I exist makes her somehow not herself.
“No, Mom, I won’t. It’s fucking weird.” There. I said it. She stares at me, shocked. I take advantage of the opening and barrel through.
“It’s fucking weird, this whole thing is fucking weird, this place and the white clothes and all the Sanskrit words, what is that about, you don’t even speak Sanskrit! We came here and all of a sudden you’re like a totally different person.” It feels good to finally get it out, and hurts at the same time.
She’s upset, so much going on in her face that it looks like it might start throbbing, but she tries to cover over it with calm. “Tessa, I am a different person. Before we came here, I was lost. I was miserable. I didn’t know who I was.”
“Before we came here you were my mom. Remember that? Remember when you used to take me places and make me breakfast and come get me after school? Remember when I used to go to school? You never asked me if I wanted to stop! You never asked me if I wanted to come here. You just picked me up and dragged me here and then ran off and left me by myself.” I’m not really by myself, not anymore, but I leave that part out; that’s mine, not hers, and I swear I will never ever let her know. “Like you always fucking do. And now you want me to call you some stupid fucking name I can’t even pronounce? No way. Fucking forget it.”
She inhales deep, on purpose: her chest goes up and down, her nostrils flare. Then she starts saying some mantra to herself, under her breath. It’s like she’s trying to show me I’m pissing her off without just coming out and admitting it. Like, Look how hard you’re making me work to keep my spiritual composure.
“Just quit it, Mom. You’re not fooling anyone.” I roll my eyes.
And then the mantra stops, and the deep breathing. “God damnit, Tessa, who the hell do you think you are?
You think it’s fun doing telemarketing in Akron to pay for your food when your father won’t even send a dime? You think it’s easy buying the groceries and paying the rent and getting you back and forth to school every single day totally alone? Excuse me if I try to have my own identity. Excuse me if I try, against the wishes of the whole goddamn world, to be happy.”
Now I’m crying. “I’m sorry it’s so hard for you to be my mom. I’m sorry I’m such a big giant drag. What am I supposed to do? Buy our food myself? Go get a job so you can go on a road trip with gypsies? I’m your kid.”
She hurtles forward like she didn’t even hear me. “You know, Tessa, you are just so cruel. After fourteen years I finally get us someplace where I can finally be happy. And you just want to spit all over it.”
“Fifteen,” I say. “What?” “Fifteen. It’s fifteen years. Last week was my birthday.” Her face falls. “Oh, Tessa—” But I don’t want her to feel bad and say sorry and make me forgive her. I want to stay mad. “Right. Did you ever think about maybe the whole goddamn world doesn’t revolve around you? Do you ever even think about whether I’m happy? I didn’t want to come here on your fucking stupid spiritual journey. I didn’t want to hear all about your boyfriends or hang out with that stupid kayaker in Big Sur or switch schools a million times. I didn’t want to go on the road or live in a tent full of mosquitoes. I wish I could live with Dad.”
And now the sorry leaves her eyes; she’s mad.
Good.
“You do, huh?” Her face flushes hot; tears shine her cheeks. It sort of disgusts me. I feel like neither of us has any skin. “Well guess what, Tessa. Your father doesn’t want to live with you.”
I feel like someone kicked me in the gut, but I don’t let her see. I clench my jaw so tight my teeth grate, and I think: I hate you.
“He doesn’t want us, Tessa, okay? He’s not here. I am. I bought the gas. I paid for your room and your food and your goddamn running water. You better learn a little gratitude, lady. Or else you just take your judgments and your attitude and you see how you do on your own, without someone devoting their entire goddamn life to taking care of you.”
Something stronger than blood is coursing through my veins. My fingers are pulsing with it. So are my feet. They need to move. I need to move. Now.
“Fine.” I rip away from her, hurl myself out of the room. The crack of the door slamming echoes down the hall behind me, interrupting everybody’s morning meditation.
. . . . .
I tumble down the back stairs so fast the concrete is a blur, shove the fire door open and run out. Gravel slides under my feet but I don’t think about falling, I just run. People cluster, queuing up for breakfast, but my tears are too thick to see who they are, and I don’t stop to look. All I can think is one thing: Be here please be here please be here.
He is. He’s hunched over the hood of a school bus and I don’t care who hears me, I yell his name from twenty feet away. He turns and sees me crying. Worry takes over his face, soft fills up his green eyes, and that’s the look, that was the look I wanted, the one that says: I see you. I run right into his arms. “Let’s go,” I say. “I don’t care where. Just get me out of here.” He’s nervous driving me out during the middle of breakfast, crowds clutched around the entrance, everyone awake in early morning. He puts his hand between my shoulder blades to push me below the passenger window. I press back, stay sitting up. I don’t care who sees. I find the Violent Femmes tape, and once we pass Atma Lakshmi I turn it up loud. The jangly chords match my nerves, the energy of my body reaching through the air to meet the music. I move my head hard to the snare drum beat and suddenly understand heavy metal headbangers. Colin just watches me and drives. They hurt me bad, but I don’t mind; they hurt me bad, they do it all the time. I know the words now and I sing along, face pointed out the open window, wind biting my teeth. By the time Please Do Not Go comes on, my breathing’s even, tears dried sticky on my cheeks. I lower the volume. Colin turns to me.
“What happened, Tess?”
I don’t even know where to start.
“Mom?” he starts for me. Thank god.
“Yeah.”
“What’d she do now?”
“She’s just so . . .” Frustration curls around my words, catches them before they can get to my mouth. I push them out. “She’s just so selfish.”
He nods.
“It’s like—Okay.” I shift in my seat, dig in for the story. “It’s enough that she forgot my birthday. But now she comes home with a new name, right? They all get new names from the Guru. In Sanskrit or whatever. Fine. But she wants me to call her it.”
He makes a sympathetic face of ugh.
