Miss Buddha (29 page)

“I know.”

“You agreed,” confirmed Ananda.

“I know.”

“You cannot un-agree,” said Ananda.

“I can.” And truly meant it.

And of course she could. She could do
anything, Melissa realized that, and so did Ananda.

“You have seen the world,” said Ananda.

“I have.”

“You know what it would do.”

“I don’t know that.”

“You hope,” said Ananda. “You hope that it
will listen.”

“I do.”

“What will you tell it, Tathagata?” said
Ananda. “What will the nine-year old girl go forth and tell the
world.?”

“The four noble truths, and the noble
eightfold path.”

“And the world will listen? That is what you
think?”

“That is what I think.”

“Well, Tathagata, you think wrong,” Ananda
declared.

“It must,” said Ruth.

“It will not,” said Melissa.

“How do you know? How could you know? Why do
you say that?” Addressing the two of them. Almost shouting.

“I have been here nearly seventy years,”
said Ananda. “I have seen the depths to which the world has sunk. I
have seen the fears it has gathered and now wraps around itself as
a wreath, eyes blind with earthy dust. Please believe me, it will
not understand.”

“It will not understand what?” said
Ruth.

“It will not believe a nine-year old girl,”
said Melissa, “no matter how true her words.”

“I can convince them.”

“You’ll be deemed insane, and treated
accordingly,” said Melissa.

“It’s a chance I’ll have to take,” said
Ruth.

“It’s a chance I will not permit you to
take,” said Melissa.

“How are you going to prevent me?” said
Ruth.

Melissa said nothing. Ananda looked from one
to the other. Ruth said nothing. Melissa looked down on her hands,
then back to her daughter, “By never speaking to you again,” she
said.

Ruth looked stricken. She looked over at
Ananda who now actually smiled. She looked back at Melissa who held
her gaze, daring Ruth to disbelieve her.

“That’s not fair,” Ruth said finally.

“When the time is right,” said Melissa, “I
will do whatever it takes, whatever I can, to help you. I believe
you, I know you, and I know what you must do. But I also know that
you must succeed.”

“Fair or not,” said Ananda. “Melissa is
right. And you, Buddha Gotama, know better than to dishonor your
agreements.”

“It is so hard,” said Ruth.

“We will know when the time is right,”
Ananda said. Melissa nodded her agreement. “And then we will know
how.”

::
66 :: (White Mountains)

In March of 2020 they took a trip to the
White Mountains in eastern California. Ruth wanted to speak to the
Bristlecones, she said.

Melissa, who had heard of Bristlecone Pines
only fleetingly—she couldn’t remember where, though she tried
to—borrowed her daughter’s Mortimer and did some research, from
which she emerged astounded.

“Five thousand years old?” she said, looking
up at Ruth who was studying the Mortimer over her shoulder.

“And mostly heartwood,” said Ruth.

“What’s heartwood?” said Melissa.

“True wood,” said Ananda.

Early spring the weather had yet to turn too
hot as they drove through high desert and salt flats. Signs
pointing east spoke of “Death Valley” not too far away in that
direction. They looked at each other, each softly shaking a head.
None of them opted for a detour.

The little motel in Big Pine had two
adjacent rooms for rent—in fact, had most, if not all, of the motel
for rent—so Ruth and Melissa settled in one of them, Ananda in the
one next door.

“Are you really going to talk to them?” said
Melissa, as they unpacked the few things they had brought, hanging
things up on the odd assortment of leftover plastic and wire
hangers provided—or not cleared out—by the motel.

“Yes,” said Ruth.

“So you believe,” began Melissa, but then
realized that she didn’t quite know what she was asking.

Ruth did, however. “It is not a matter of
belief,” said Ruth. And then, as if she had been meaning to tell
Melissa for some time about this, “So much, today, is just that.
Belief. No, not even belief, that’s too strong a word. Opinions,
more often than not masquerading as beliefs. Or hope, that’s what
it is. At its base, today’s belief is nothing but opinions or hope,
and vague hope at that. Wish.”

Melissa didn’t answer. She knew what Ruth
was talking about, could feel the meaning viscerally. Didn’t want
to think or analyze the words lest her instinctive certainty took
wing.

Ruth, working her sweater and jacket them
onto un-matching hangers, continued as if addressing them, but
Melissa knew each word was meant for her.

“Life is life is life,” she said. “Some life
has tongues; other life has leaves. Whether tongue or leaf, life
knows life. Life knows the presence of life. Life sings life.”

“Sings?”

Ruth finally worked her sweater onto too
large a hanger. Then turned and looked at her mother. Her eyes more
startlingly blue every day, Melissa thought. Her hair darker and
darker, nearly the blue black of distant Indian cousins now. Such
an incongruous combination, a little unsettling.

“It is not the right word, I know that. But
no other word comes closer. It is the song of the floorboards when
the low notes of the church organ begin to breathe. The ear is
fooled into believing that nothing speaks, but your feet know
better.”

Melissa wondered how Ruth knew, but it was
the perfect analogy, for she remembered knowing this the first (and
only) time her mother had brought her to an organ recital. The
Pasadena Presbyterian Church, if she remembered correctly, on
Colorado Boulevard. The low notes, those notes her feet heard way
before her ears, if indeed the ears truly caught on.

“I know,” she said.

“It’s not so much a vibration,” said Ruth,
“as it is a layered ocean.”

Melissa sat down on the edge of her bed,
waited for more.

“We talk through surface ripples and waves,”
said Ruth. “But we know through deeper currents. And there are
currents deeper still, cooler, slower, more patient. We have our
roots in those currents, same as the bristlecone.”

Melissa tried to picture it. Tried to be
this picture. Succeeded.

“Precisely,” said (or thought, Melissa
didn’t catch which) Ruth.

“How do you learn? How can you hear?”

“Not with your ears,” said Ruth. “With your
roots.”

“But I don’t have any roots,” said
Melissa.

“You don’t?” said Ruth, in mock
surprise.

“I do?” said Melissa.

“Of course,” said Ruth.

“How can I learn?” said Melissa again.

“Listen, but not with your ears.”

“Like when you appear in my head?”

“Like that, but deeper. As if your history
appeared in the present as roots.”

“You’ll have to show me,” said Melissa.

“That I can’t do. I can only point.”

She had said this before.
She can only point. She will only point. These were the words of
the Buddha
Gotama, she knew that; had read
that. He would only point. The looking, the seeing, the
experiencing, was up to her. Up to the pointed-for.

“What do you expect to hear?”

“From the bristlecone?”

“Yes.”

“I expect to hear the song of true
heartwood.”

:

They set out the following morning, a good
hour before sunrise. Melissa drove, Ananda studied the map and gave
directions. Ruth, in the back seat, quietly saw what could be seen
in the diminishing darkness the other side of the car window.

The road, as it happened, was well marked,
and soon they were serpentining up the broad mountain side of the
White Mountains, home of the world’s largest congregation of
bristlecone pine.

The sky drew less dark, then less dark
still, then pink in the east, then streaked with flame as the
oncoming sun blushed strips of cloud barely above the horizon.
There was no wind, just the slow, majestic turning of planet that
by minute degree intensified the brightness of flame, until the
flame extinguished into white and the tip of sun—a steadily growing
arc, massive even at such distance—heralded morning.

The half-light struck the old bristlecone
and sprung it alive.

They all saw it at the same time. Alone,
atop a small slope, perhaps fifty meters off the road. Neither Ruth
nor Ananda told Melissa to stop, it was a given.

She stilled the engine, and they climbed out
into the thinner, cooler air. The world was still asleep, and the
only sound that reached their ears was the soft and occasional
crackle of the car engine cooling from the journey.

The bristlecone grew lighter and lighter
with the Earth’s continued turning, and the three of them set out
to greet it.

The terrain was rocky and dry. No path here.
Just stones and tenacious little plants, brown and green asking not
to be stepped on. Careful where you place your foot lest you slip.
One mindful step after the other, repeated, and repeated again,
they made their way up the hill, where it stood, looking their way,
as if expecting company.

And so they arrived, the three visitors,
none moving now, just looking at this ancient citizen. At ancient
wood, still standing. Ruth finally stepped all the way up to it and
touched it with both hands. Closed her eyes, and sang the deepest
layer of ocean this planet knows.

:

Melissa heard nothing but soft wind rising.
It was coming out of the east, as if sunlight had harnessed the
air, or the other way around. Soft air on cheek, a small chill
against her neck. A whisper in her ear. I am air. I am sun.

Ananda to her left had closed his eyes.

Melissa could not tell whether Ruth had,
too; her hands still on the ancient trunk, her face turned away,
head tilting down, slightly, as if listening intently or
respectfully.

Then Melissa, too, closed her eyes—or her
eyes closed themselves.

Out of the silent distance, the cry of a
bird. Not an anxious cry, or an agitated one. A greeting perhaps.
Soon answered. Other priorities, other lives lived, other tales
told.

Then there was only the wind again,
light-carrying toucher of cheek and stirrer of hair, rustler of
pine, waker of brushwood.

With this gentle wind, Melissa heard how
much she enjoyed life at this moment.

If it was a note, she didn’t notice its
arrival. Perhaps it had always been with her, always beyond reach,
until now. Part of her makeup all along. Perhaps they could have
been, but were not thoughts. Not articulated as such, anyway. But
there was a note, for a note is a vibration, is it not? And there
are spectra. And there are layers, one deeper than the other.
Perhaps a vast or distant enough ear can hear the once a day
oscillation of the Earth turning, perhaps an ear larger still can
hear the once an aeon turning of our galaxy.

This note, however, called for ears less
colossal.

The difference between a note and just any
sound, Melissa could have thought, but didn’t—instead it arose as
unarticulated epiphany—is the constancy of oscillation, the core of
beauty. The continuous scraping of tectonic plates, for example,
which is quite audible to the larger ear, is not a note, it is a
noise. The constant indigestion of the Earth’s core is no song, it
is a complaint, a peevishness.

What she heard with her larger ear was a
note. First one, then another. Several, long and slow each. A
song.

The next notion that arose was that she was
not hearing as much as seeing the song, though she will later never
quite resolve the difference, if any.

Perhaps, she did think, I am listening to
language, though no message beyond the unutterable beauty of the
wave reached her, as if beauty itself stood guard, and would not
let meaning through; it was not meant for her ear.

Perhaps, she thought, I am listening to
conversation. This thought, however, was more like the brief
glitter of firefly than statement of being, soon gone, leaving her
lost to beauty.

When Ananda finally spoke, it might has well
have been a stone, or a twig, or a moss speaking, Melissa had such
trouble locating a source of the word. Then he spoke again, the
same word: “Melissa.”

She finally opened her eyes. Ruth was
looking at her, Ananda, too.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was miles away.”

:

There it stands, atop a small, pathless
incline perhaps fifty meters away. A solitary tree, this copse-less
bristlecone. Was it him I heard? Was it he that called?

We all see it, as with communal eyes, as
with communal ear. Melissa stops the car, parks as far off to the
right of the road as she can, even dipping the wheels over the bed
side, kills the engine, looks back at the beckoning tree.

We careful our way up the soft slope,
sidestepping rocks and anxious shrub, step by deliberate step
approaching the soft light surrounding him that I wonder if Ananda
sees, too?

I look over at him but he is too busy
placing feet just right to look back, but then he looks up and I
know he, too, sees the soft glow of true heartwood.

Arrived. First we stand, a small
congregation, and very still, as if awaiting an invitation, though
we were already invited, expected even. In awe of his age, that is
how we stand.

Then I step up to him, and place my hands on
his trunk, fuse my hands to his trunk, fuse my being to his, and
then I listen.

He had a name once, he tells me, but it is
so old it has crumbled under the weight of years and turned to
distant dust, though he wishes he could gather and de-dust it, and
so greet me properly, for he knows mine, he says, and then he says
it, Tathagata.