Karma for Beginners (2 page)

My heart sinks. “I didn't say that's why I—”

“I shouldn't be so negative. You don't need all those bad vibes about the past. You're right. It's about our future now.”

She spots a road sign and slows down. “Listen,” she says. “Let's stop for a second. Okay, Tess? And then we'll start again from scratch.”

She pulls off the freeway into the rest stop and puts the car in park. An Ohio mom and dad with matching sky-blue baseball caps frown at us, but my mom doesn't notice. Her eyes are on me. Like I'm more important than anything else around her. Like she just remembered. Even though I'm still mad at her, I'm grateful.

She leans across the seat, clinking the little brass Buddhas that dangle on red cords from the rearview mirror. I stiffen against her, but she keeps holding on, and finally I let myself melt into it. “It's okay,” she whispers in my ear, and then pulls back, ruffles my hair and smiles wide. “I'm such a dummy sometimes,” she laughs. “Duh. What would I do without you to remind me, Tess? It's about our future,” she says again, grinning into my eyes.

It's hard to stay mad at my mom when she's happy. When she turns her joy around on you it's like a waterfall, and no matter how hard you try to stay dry it floods over you fast, washing away everything that came before. I don't know if the future's going to be as beautiful as she says, but when she looks at me like that I don't care.

“Okay.” I accept it. At least for now. “Okay. And you'll stay with me there? In the future?” I ask her. I don't mean literally; I mean stay with me like
this
.

“I will,” she says. “I promise.”

“All right,” I tell her, meaning it.

“C'mon,” she says, and puts the car in drive again. “Roll down the windows, Tess,” she says, “all of them,” and I do. She turns up the music, puts her foot to the gas, and we speed, faster and faster till wind floods the car and whips our hair into our faces, till the trucks blur and Ohio disappears, till everything melts away in motion and the world around us turns open and new.

. . .

To know the bliss of universal solitude is to touch the Absolute.

After that she drives two hours without saying anything, just singing along to her tape of the Rolling Stones. When I try to talk to her, she just says, “Shh, Tess, I'm really
in
the music right now.” I simmer for a while, and then at our second Exxon stop I announce I'm finishing the trip in the way back, stretched out by myself.

“Come on, Tessa, stay up here with me,” she says.

“The wind's making my eyes hurt.”

“I'll roll the windows up—”

“Don't worry about it, okay? Just forget it.”

“C'mon, Tess, we're on this trip together. It's for both of us.”

Then she asks what bands I want to listen to, and I definitely do not want to talk to her about that at all. I just say, “God. Would you just let me sit in the goddamn backseat, please?” She gives me a look like she's annoyed I said goddamn, but in our household there aren't any words that are inherently bad, so ha ha, she can't get me in trouble.

I dig into my backpack for my tapes. Most of them are mixed-together songs recorded off the radio, the DJ's voice coming in on the fade-out after some dumb song like
Manic Monday
. I never have money to buy much more and I'm also not sure what I'd like: at my last school I tried to figure it out by hanging around the guys that knew about different bands' histories, but when they started arguing about New Wave versus New Romantics all I could do was stand there mute and then they looked at me weird and I left. But when I heard
I Melt With You
and
Just Like Heaven
and
If You Leave
on the radio, I loved them so much I scrounged ten bucks from my mom's wallet to go and get the albums, and so now my collection is: The Cure, Modern English, John Cougar Mellencamp, and the “Pretty in Pink” sound-track. Plus one more.

In the middle of eighth grade I saw an ad in
Rolling Stone
for the most exhaustive catalog of music albums of all time ever. I decided to get the catalog, just to check, and halfway through the G's I found it. My dad's band, The Green Tea Experience. I wanted that tape more than anything I'd ever known. I didn't care about the stories my mom told me. I didn't care about it being a betrayal. I didn't care that she said he shoved her. He's my dad. I got home early to check the mailbox every day until it came, and then I got the record company's address from the liner notes, and then I wrapped the tape in a secret scarf inside a secret drawer to hide it away forever, as far as humanly possible from my mom.

She finally says fine, I can ride lying down in the back, on the express condition that I keep my feet off the defroster wires on the inside of the back window. They could break. So I put on Green Tea Experience and lie on my side, knees scrunched up to my chest, and strain to hear my dad's voice in the backup vocals.

Here is what it takes: thirteen hours of freeway, two hours of hills and woods and pine trees, forty-five minutes of deserted bungalow colonies with empty plastic swing sets that my mom says are for Jewish people in the summer. We are in the “Catskills,” my mom says. “You know, historically, this land has been inhabited by Jewish people on vacation and by counterculturalists, like us.”

I wonder what the Jewish people in the summer think of the swamis in their orange robes. I also note the names of the roads—Mount Hope Road, Butrick Way—that lead off toward Levner's River Cottages, in case I need to escape.

After Levner's, it's more trees. And then the gift shop. That's the first thing you see. The words “Atma Lakshmi” are painted on wood out front, in big white cursive letters against a sloppy swirly blue background that can't decide whether it's supposed to look like the sky or the ocean, and so it winds up just looking like paint. On the front is a brilliantly colored transparent decal featuring a dolphin jumping over waves, underneath an arc of rainbow, which matches exactly the decal on my mom's car's rear window.

“Look, the universe is trying to tell us something. We're in the exact right place, Tess. We've come home,” my mom says, pointing at the sticker. “It's a sign.”

I don't mention that I've seen that exact transparent rainbow sticker at every New Age bookstore she's taken me to for the last three years. I just wiggle my socks up onto the rear window of our car, covering up the decal and the defroster wires around it. “Wow, that's cool,” I say, so my mom will think I'm listening to her, and won't turn back and notice I'm touching the window where I'm not supposed to.

The ashram's driveway, so long it's more like a road, winds past the gift shop and the groves of pine trees before it spills out into a graveled area in front of the main building. It looks like the front of a motel, the part where you pull around and leave the car running while you find out if they have rooms available. And it's that big, too. Four floors of rooms lined up with numbers on the door plus a lobby in the front. Except that here the building is made out of wood instead of poured concrete, there's no fluorescent sign, and when you look through the window you see a spring-water cooler instead of a burned-out coffeepot. We sit in the car, idling by the entrance. I pray to myself that my mom won't ask me to go in alone and ask where we should park.

“Tess, would you run in and ask where we're supposed to park?”

I roll my eyes toward the back window so she won't see. The last thing I need is a conversation about why I'm rolling my eyes. “Yes, ma'am,” I say, knowing she'll hate that, and slide out the car door, still in my socks.

I'm hoping that the ashram people will be annoyed I came in without my shoes on, but no one seems to care. They just stand there in the fancy lobby, as big as any of our apartments, staring, and then they all sort of smile, in a thin way that I don't quite believe. I shove my fists into my jeans pockets and glower back.

After a minute, a woman comes up. Her graying black hair is permed into the white-lady equivalent of an Afro, and her sweater is magenta with shoulder pads. Her name tag says “Ninyassa” and has a driver's license– looking picture on it next to a pink swan. “Welcome,” she says, in this way that makes it sound like she's known me for a long time, except she hasn't. For a second I'm afraid she's going to give me a hug. “I'm Ninyassa.” Behind her, other people are still staring. They're all old, like forty at least, and they're all wearing flowy cotton clothes.

“Um, where are we supposed to park?”

“Well, that depends. Are you here for the Weekend Intensive, or for Afternoon Chanting Practice, or for the Heart Awakening Retreat?”

I have never heard of any of those things. “I think we're just here to—to live here?”

“Well, nobody really
lives
here. Maybe you're here for Extended Retreat?”

“I guess.”

“Okay, well, in that case you're going to want to come over here”—and she leads me to a pink marble desk, with tall lilies in a glass vase, and a zillion tiny framed pictures of this Indian guy with a long beard— “and check in with me. First you'll have your picture taken for your name tag. Birth name or spiritual name?”

“Huh?”

“Shall I put your
birth
name or your
spiritual
name down for your name tag?”

“I don't really know what—”

“You do have a spiritual name, don't you? If you're devoted to your practice, that's probably what you're going to want people to call you by. As a reminder.”

“Um—could I get my mom?” She stops then for a second, and it seems like the first moment that she actually looks at me. I think she notices I'm fourteen. “She's outside, in the car. She doesn't know where to park.”

“Well, we're still going to have to decide what name to put down for your name tag. But go ahead. Just make sure she doesn't park in the Heart Awakening section or the Dharma Lot.”

To me, it just looks like a bunch of cars. But as we drive around in circles, I tell my mom, “You have to watch out for signs that say Heart Awakening section or Dharma Lot, and make sure not to park there.” She looks happy that she's learning the rules, like when you get a good grade in math class.

The cars sit in haphazard rows: mostly station wagons like ours, a hatchback here and there, and more vans than you'd see normally, lots of them with bumper stickers that say stuff like
YOU CAN'T HUG A CHILD WITH NUCLEAR ARMS
and
U.S. OUT OF EL SALVADOR.
There are even a few of the old kind of VW buses, the ones that are yellow or purple or red and have a pop-up roof. I always thought those were the only really cool part of being a hippie, and secretly I wish we had one, but we've always just had a station wagon. My mom says the centers of gravity in VW buses are too high and they could tip.

After circling around a bunch of times, my mom says, “Screw it,” and we pull into a random empty space. Gravel crunches and rearview Buddhas jingle as she puts our car in park. She turns to me, grinning. “You ready for the next big chapter, Tess?”

I am not ready for any sort of chapter. Mostly I want to go home, except there isn't any such thing. My mom puts on grape-flavored lip gloss in the rearview mirror, tosses her hair, slings her striped straw purse over her shoulder, and walks toward the entrance like she's leaving for a date.

Ninyassa's already waiting at the door. “Welcome,” she tells my mom, in that same weird warm-but-not-warm way she said it to me, except she doesn't smile.

“Oh, we're so relieved to be here. It's been quite a journey!” my mom says. Ninyassa doesn't say anything back except she sort of frowns, and suddenly my mom doesn't look like she's going on a date anymore, she looks like she's standing at a party with no one to talk to. Ninyassa's white-lady Afro wobbles a little.

“You must be here for Extended Retreat.”

“We are,” my mom says. “The universe has been preparing us for quite a while now.” She stands up straighter, nervous. I swear, she's like me on the first day of school or something. Ninyassa spends a long time looking at my mother's boobs and lip gloss. Then she glares.

“Okay, well, you'll need to come over here.” Ninyassa walks over to the check-in counter too fast for us to follow behind. When we catch up she already has two blank rose-colored name tags out. She looks at me. “I don't believe you had decided which name you were using?” And she smiles.

“Uh, just Tessa.” My mom looks at me like I should've answered something else, but what was I going to say? That's the only name I have.

Ninyassa's eyes flick over to my mom. “And you?”

“My name is Sarah,” my mom tells her. “I mean, that's the name I was given by my parents. But it might be changing soon.” She says it like there's a wink in it somewhere. Ninyassa just blinks. The thick knit ribs of her magenta cotton sweater move up and down with her breath.

“Okay, so Sarah. Come on over here and I'll take your photos.”

I always loved Polaroids, the way you wave them in the air and gradually a picture is revealed that looks exactly like the room you're standing in, so you get to be inside the moment that you're in and look at that moment at the very same time. I don't so much love this Polaroid, though, because I have a double chin in it.

I don't normally have a double chin. It's just the way I was spazzy fake-smiling so my face scrunched into my neck. Normally my chin is fine. My whole face is fine: there's nothing wrong with it, except that there's nothing really right with it either. It's just there. Bluish-gray eyes, pale brown freckles, and dark brown hair, straight down to my shoulders. The hair used to be long, back when my mom got to decide. It got tangled and heavy and fell in my face, but when I'd complain, my mom would just say, “C'mere,” settle in with the brush and start French braiding, tie it up in Princess Leia knots. We matched; she'd shake her hair and laugh and I'd copy her. When I was twelve I cut off my braid. After that I let it grow some, and since then it's been one length, blunt at my shoulders. My mom still tries to play with it, tie it back with silk and paisley scarves, but I don't let her. She can be beautiful enough for both of us.

Of course my mom looks gorgeous in her Polaroid, just like in real life—high cheekbones and white teeth that gleam, eyes warm and dark like molasses. Her long silver earrings nestle in her wavy hair. Ninyassa glares again. And then she says, “Wonderful,” in her weird warm voice, and glues the Polaroids to our name tags, right next to the pink swans.

The weight of the milk crates bites down on my fingers; I know they'll leave nasty red marks when I finally put them down. This is our fifth trip up the stairs. I can't wait to get inside my room and shut the door and secretly start a letter to my dad.

The last few steps, I'm almost panting and I stink. This is the worst part of moving, when you've traveled all the way somewhere and all you want to do is stop, sit down, finally land, and instead you have to carry a thousand pounds of boxes until you're so tired you can barely even walk. I've done it a zillion times; I know. When we get to the top my mom hands me the keys. “Here,” she says. “Just put that stuff inside; I'll get the last load.” I wait till she turns before I open the door.

I don't know what I expected the room to look like, exactly. A lot of places we've lived have been small;in Big Sur we didn't even have walls, only tents. But I always had a place where I could close the door. Or the tent flap.

But here it's just one room for both of us, on one side a queen bed, a twin up against the other corner of the room. The tiny tiled bathroom tucks into a corner; the whole place seems small and old and cheap. Especially when you compare it to the pink marble entranceway, to what this place wants you to think it is.