Karma for Beginners (14 page)

He goes over to the dresser where his boom box is, sifts through a crate of tapes with no cases. “So what's our soundtrack, Tess?”

“Um.” I get distracted for a minute, looking at his nightstand. There's a box of condoms on it. I stare. He doesn't notice.

“Here, lemme give you some options.” He sifts some more. “J. Geils Band. Police. Ummm . . . the Kinks. Pretenders. REM. Oh! How 'bout early Aerosmith? ‘Toys in the Attic?'”

I yank my gaze off his nightstand, try to come up with an answer. All I know about Aerosmith is that
Walk This Way
song that was on the radio last year. It was sort of rap. “Are they rap?”

Colin laughs. “No. They're not rap. Here, listen.”

He presses PLAY; it picks up in the middle of a song, all loud guitars and bluesy beats. “I saw them, you know.”

“Wow, really?” I'm sitting on the bed. There's no place else to sit. He nods. “‘Back in the Saddle' tour, 1984. Joe Perry—the guitarist? He was on some crazy drugs, but they
rocked
.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Me and my buddies Clint and Bennett camped out for two days for those tickets. You'll meet them. Clint and Bennett.”

“Oh.” He wants me to meet his friends. I'm at his house. I'm sitting on his bed.

“That okay with you?” He chuckles.

“Yeah.” I say, blushing and half mute. “Yeah, of course it's okay. I'd love to.”

“Cool.” He plops down next to me. A new song comes on. “Oh
man
!
Sweet Emotion
. They did this for the encore. It's a serious classic.”

The bass line thumps a long intro. He leans in and kisses me. The singer comes in, stretching it out as long as he can,
Sweeeeeeet emohhhhtion
, till it finally gives way to the guitar like an avalanche or a roof caving in, and he opens my lips with his tongue, and I drop into him and the song. His hands are on my back, beneath my shirt, on my bra hook, and it comes undone with one snap, and then his hands are around the front of me and a shiver goes through my entire body and all I can do is fall back onto the bed.

The pillow smells like him and half-clean laundry. He lies down beside me, slides a hand up my shirt. My eyes are open, looking into his. Guitars get louder. He leans in and kisses me again, and when I lift my face he hoists himself up and over, onto me, his corduroy thigh pressing my blue jean legs apart.

These last few weeks it's always been by a tree or in a car or at the corner of the parking lot: someplace exposed and temporary. We've never been really
alone
. Now it's different. Now I am lying on his bed inside his room with the door closed, and there's nobody to knock or walk in, no one even knows where I am; there's no net of getting-in-trouble to catch me, and I can jump as far and as deep as I want. He presses against me. My body shudders. I have never felt like this. “Let's do it,” I whisper to him with my eyes open. All movement skids to a halt and he pulls back to look at me. “What?” He stares hard into my eyes, not judging or mean, more like,
Where did you come from?
and
Are you telling me the truth
? I could back away, say,
Nothing, forget it
, just kiss him again like we've been kissing all month, but I don't want to. I want to jump.

“Let's do it,” I tell him again.
He tilts his head to the side. “Tessa.”
I don't say anything.
“Tessa, are you sure?”
And now my heart starts thumping hard, because
suddenly I'm not. Suddenly the fact that he doubts it makes me think that maybe I should too. Maybe it's wrong; maybe I'm not ready; maybe doing it will take us down a different road I can't even picture or imagine. Maybe it's not safe, or he'll freak out and get uncomfortable, or leave after two months of it like all my mother's boyfriends. Maybe it actually matters that he's twenty and technically it's illegal. I start to panic:
What did I just say?

Except then he takes his hand and runs it down my cheek, and somehow the soft of his skin wipes away all those maybes. My heart doesn't slow down, my breath doesn't get smooth, I don't stop being scared, but I know. They always say you're ready when you love someone, and we've never said it but I know that this is love. His smell on the pillow, his hair on my lips, his hand on my back; the familiar when he laughs, the safe in his van with his hand clutched in mine. It doesn't matter if anyone else wants me but Colin. This is it. I will never be back in this moment again. I gulp in air and tell him,
Yes
.

Afterward, you're supposed to feel like a different person. You're supposed to feel like a woman or something, suddenly adult—all the little-kid hitches gone, transformed into a new, more finished version of yourself. But lying on his bed, sheets swirled around, I still feel like the regular me. Except naked, which is weird, because he's naked too. I haven't been in the vicinity of another naked person since my mom and a bunch of her friends took me to a nude beach when I was six, and even then I wore my bathing suit. And anyway, the two experiences don't exactly compare.

He lies there, sprawled on the pillow like it's totally normal. The sheet's pulled halfway up his stomach so I can see his chest, the muscles of it, dark hairs against pale skin looking bare and animal. He looks like a man. He's smiling. The fact that he's a naked animal doesn't seem to bother him at all. He props himself up on his elbow, turns to me. “Hey, Tess,” he says, his eyes a mixture of sweet and amused. I feel tender and shaky, like all of me is on the outside. “Hey,” I say.

He drags one finger down my side. “You feel okay?”

“Yeah,” I tell him.

“It didn't hurt too much?”

I shake my head no.

Right at the doorstep of doing it, he said,
This is your first time, right? You didn't tell me but I know
. Like him knowing in the van that I had a big fight with my mom. Like him knowing what music I would like without me saying, before I even knew myself. My mom is always telling me I'll understand things when I have more life experience, and I've always thought that was kind of a crock, but now I know what she means. Colin has life experience; it makes him know things before you tell him. It makes him know me better than I know myself. Maybe that's what they mean when they say “wise.”

He said,
This might hurt a little,
and it did, but I didn't flinch. My eyes welled up but I squeezed them shut, and anyway his face was over my shoulder by then, pressed into the pillow, in his own world. The hurt bled into the whole of it, him moving over me, closer than I'd ever been to anyone, closer than I'd ever even been to myself. I thought I might crack open, but I just hung on, memorizing the smell of the skin of his neck, and when it stopped hurting enough to open my eyes, I counted the million freckles sprawling out across his shoulders, each one a tiny miracle.

“Do you feel different?” he asks, and I don't know how to do anything but tell the truth.

“Not really.”

There's a pause.

“Is that weird?” I ask.

“That's not weird,” he says, and cracks that grin again.

“Good,” I say. “I was worried it was weird.” When I hear it come out of my mouth I realize how funny it is to worry things are weird when you're with another person who's not hiding even a little tiny part of himself. And I realize that's the whole point: to be together and not hiding any parts. No secrets. Nothing held back. That's the whole entire point. The shaky feeling melts away and suddenly I do feel different.

We lie in bed forever, talking, and when we finally start to get restless he lends me his sweater to go outside. I watch him get dressed, cross the room without his shirt on, dig through laundry for his clothes. His sides slant toward his waist in a V, sloped in from his strong shoulders, and I think:That's what a man looks like. He pulls on a flannel and jeans, and when we walk onto the stoop, the sky's already pink. Winter's close, I guess, and night comes early, but still, I can't believe the whole day just swallowed itself inside his room. It makes my body feel confused, like when you lie down for a nap in sunlight and wake up when it's dark. The air smells cold; his hand's warm around mine. “Wanna see the creek before we head back?” Now that I saw how dark it is, I'm getting anxious, but I say, “Sure,” and remind myself nobody's going to notice that I'm gone.

Light floods out through the windows of Main Building, all the ashram people laughing through the glass. You can't hear what they're saying, but you can see them in there like a diorama, their own little enclosed world. I used to walk by other people's houses, right at dusk and after, when my mom was out on dates. One by one I'd peek in all the windows, see a tiny universe in every home, like dollhouses but real. Sometimes there'd be an old guy having a TV dinner, but mostly it was families clustered up in twos and threes and fives, boxed in by four safe walls, everybody home. I'd watch them from outside, wishing that one of those worlds would hold my mom and dad and me, TV on while we ate meat loaf, cleared the table, got some milk. Our apartment always seemed too empty when I went home afterward, dark even when I turned on all the lamps.

I sit with Colin in the van, dim light above the windshield circling us in our own private glow. And I realize: This van is my world. My light. I'm not outside anymore; I'm one of the people that I used to watch.

Colin kisses me good night.

“You're beautiful, Tessa,” he says, and I believe him.

. . .

Resistance, like fear, is not to be heeded;
you must push past discomfort to know the bliss
that lies beyond.

I haven't seen Jayita since that night of
darshan,
and I was almost hoping she'd left. I was hoping she'd decided to do the thing she really wanted to, not the thing she was supposed to. Even if it was hard.

But now she's right here in the cafeteria, standing up and arguing with a table full of people. She's lost a bunch of weight; even through her flowy skirt you can see the angles of her bones. Her eyes look jumpy and scared, like a hungry animal's. I move a few steps closer, just enough to make out what she's saying. “Prapati” is the first word I hear. I'm trying to figure out why that sounds familiar when I realize it's my mom's name. Avtar and Bhav and Gajendra all sit around their table. “Jayita,” Gajendra says, “we're all entitled to our questions, but come on. Don't you think what you're implying is a little—rash?”

“No, but I mean it, I think I saw something really upsetting going on up there.” Her voice is high and loud; she seems almost panicky. “We're supposed to be pure here, there are rules, and he's supposed to be the purest one of all, and it's—”

Avtar cuts her off, sharp. “Perhaps we should all just take a breath and refocus our intentions.”

“It isn't about intentions, Avtar.” She's yelling now. People at other tables are starting to look. “I'm really trying to ask a question! I really think he's—”

Now Gajendra interrupts. “That's enough, Jayita.” He shoots Avtar this tiny smirk, like Jayita's just a kid having a tantrum.

She gives up on them and scans the dining hall, like she's searching for anyone else who'll listen, but everyone who was watching her just turns back to their food. I slide behind a pillar; I don't want Jayita to see me. For some reason, I really don't want her to tell me what she thinks is going on.

She turns back to the table. “Why won't anybody listen to me?” she pleads. She does kind of sound like a kid. A really scared one.

“Look, Jayita,” Bhav jumps in with a pretend-soothing voice. “You've had to work on an attachment that was very strong for you. It must've certainly been difficult when Chakradev left the ashram, especially since he said all those awful things about you and about Guruji. And we're very proud of you for maintaining your devotion through that process. But couldn't it be possible that what you think you're sensing is only a product of your own emotion?”

She gets that look again, the one I saw that day at Guru's quarters, like the ground is going soft beneath her feet and she doesn't know what the truth is. “I don't think so, but—”

“Right. That's right,” Bhav says. “What is that ‘but'? Maybe that ‘but' is actually the voice of your inner knowing. The voice that knows that suspicion and doubt are only obstacles that rise up as we progress, and rather than spread that doubt to others, we need to learn to get beyond it.”

Jayita looks at him, eyes wide, and scared, and open. “But I don't know—”

“Exactly!” Avtar jumps in. “
None
of us know. ‘Knowing' is just an illusion of our limited egos. That's why we have to trust the Guru.” He smiles. It's kind of creepy that he's smiling at her when she's so upset.

Jayita looks to Gajendra, unsure, like,
Is what they're saying really true
? “It's true.” Gajendra nods. “Doubt is just another manifestation of fear. And our work here is to overcome our fear.”

“Okay,” Jayita finally says, but she doesn't look any less afraid.

. . . . .

I leave the dining hall without eating. For some reason that whole thing made my stomach nervous. Jayita seemed really scared about something, for real; I don't understand what it was and I don't know why those guys wouldn't let her say it. But I know that she said my mom's name. That means my mom is part of whatever Jayita was talking about. It makes me panicked. I don't even want to talk to my mom, but for some reason all of a sudden I just really need to know where she is.

I go up to our room, then comb the gift shops and the lobby, the garden by the Gandhi statue. She isn't anywhere. Finally I find the road that leads to the Guru's quarters. That's the only place that's left.

At the
NO TRESSPASSING
sign, I turn in. The flowers are gone, the last few red and orange leaves fluttering off naked branches; you can see the rocks and dirt. I tuck around the whitewashed kitchen building, crane my neck toward the bustle of steam and pots and vegetables. I watch everyone in the kitchen chant in unison while I pick through the faces for my mom. She isn't there.

She isn't in the next room I look in either, or the next. I take the long way around, passing six colors of sari curtains, till I get to the room the Guru brought Jayita to. Its white curtains are half drawn; I squint through them.

She's in there. And so is he.

She's kneeling at his feet, like Jayita was, but closer. Their eyes are locked. My mom's are wider than I've ever seen them, like Alice in Wonderland. Like a little girl. She looks younger than me; it sort of scares me. Tears stream down my mother's cheeks and I can't tell if she's happy or sad or afraid or all of them at once. Seeing it makes me feel dirty, like I'm watching something nobody's supposed to see. I've never seen her look like that, and I think,
That's where all the love is going. That's what she looks like when she loves someone
. It makes me furious.

Finally the beard guy kisses her forehead for too long. She gets off her knees and leaves the room. He turns the TV on. I stand there on tiptoe, watching through the window, trying to hear. I don't even think about getting caught. I don't even notice when the Guru hears my sneakers slip on the gravel and perks up his ears. I don't notice when he rustles in his seat, gathers his robe to stand up. I don't see him till he's walking toward the window, toward me, and it is way too late for me to run away.

A million thoughts run through my mind. This is way worse than Devanand, way worse than Ninyassa or my mom. All of a sudden I can see every little paint chip on that
NO TRESSPASSING
sign, and my mind says,
Why the hell didn't you listen to it
? There is no story I can make up to get myself out of this one. He strides to the window, black brow furrowed, slips his hands under the wood frame of the window, and hoists it up on its track like it's a feather. I don't know how someone that small could be so strong. I'm imagining my bones snapping like twigs when he reaches down and grabs my arm.

His grip is hard; his hand is hot. Hotter than any skin I've ever felt, in fact. It feels like it might burn. Heat floods through my shoulder to my neck. He says, “Come on,” and pulls me up. There's nothing to do but go along. This little tiny elfin man, two hands gripping one of my arms, is somehow able to pull me off the ground and up five feet into the window. I try to brace my sneakers against the side of the house; he keeps pulling and I keep wriggling, and soon I am sitting in a pile on the rose quartz–colored rug.

“Ha,” he says, looking me over. “The one with the friend.”

I don't know how he remembers me from six weeks ago at
darshan
, but that has to be what he means.

“You still have the bear?” he asks. I nod. And then I realize: if he remembers who I am, that means he probably knows who my mom is, and she's probably still in the next room. Shit.
Do not go get her
, I say to him in my head.
Please please please do not go get her
.

“Don't worry. I won't,” he says.

“What?” I say, confused. Did I say that out loud?

“I won't call your mother.”

I didn't say that out loud. He just read my mind. Goose bumps prick my skin.

“Sit,” he says.

“Huh?”

“
Sit
,” he says again, sharp, and points at a couch near his chair.

“Okay,” I say, and scurry over.

He watches me cross my legs, appraising something. Then he strides over.

“We will watch,” he says.

I have no idea what he's talking about, but I say, “Okay.”

He switches on the TV. The Southern guy comes on again, and I recognize him: it's Jimmy Swaggart, one of the televangelists like Jim and Tammy Faye. My mom's always talking about what repressive hypocrites those televangelists are, how they're just out to steal poor naïve sad people's money in the name of god.

Jimmy Swaggart is doing an interview with Larry King. They show a picture of Jim and Tammy Faye, and then another of this redheaded woman who looks kind of slutty. Jimmy Swaggart starts talking about Jim Bakker's sinful adultery with the redhead, and the beard guy turns to me.

“They are more fragile than they think, no?” On TV, Jimmy Swaggart says Jim Bakker is a cancer on the body of Christ. The beard guy laughs.

“You see, that is the problem.”

He looks at me like I'm supposed to ask him what he means.

“What do you mean?”

“They think one man can hurt the body of Christ. So much pride. One man's actions only ripple out into the ocean of divine bliss and disappear.”

“Ah.” So it doesn't matter what any of us ever does? That doesn't really make sense. I want to ask him what he means again, but he's not looking at me anymore.

Eyes on Larry King, he drops his hand onto the couch, between the outside of my leg and the edge of his robe. His knuckles graze the edge of my thigh. I squirm away, shifting my weight, but his hand comes with me, sending a burn up my leg into my waist and ribs. His touch is so slight, the couch so narrow, that I can't say for sure he's doing it on purpose. If I told him to quit it, he'd be shocked, and I'd be wrong, and I'd just end up feeling guilty and embarrassed. But I sort of feel like I want to throw up.

He turns his face toward the TV and chuckles at the televangelists.

When
Larry King
ends, the beard guy tells me to leave. Somehow I seem to have gotten through this entire experience without getting yelled at, but if my mother's anywhere nearby, that's going to end the second I step out that door. “You are afraid, no?” I exhale a little. Maybe he'll take it easy on me. “Yes.”

“Well.” His eyes flash. “We must push past our fear.” He turns the knob and shoves me forward.

At the end of the hall is a fire door. It says
EMERGENCY EXIT—ALARM WILL SOUND
in big red letters, but I don't care. I run, stumbling on the carpet; too fast, I hope, for anyone to see. The rug's like sand slowing my feet down but I push through and slam into the door and the alarm shrieks behind me, getting quieter and quieter as I run past the kitchen across the perfect lawns onto the road.

By the time I get to the lot my feet are sore and my head's spinning. The sky stretches out white, wind rattling spindly branches. My knuckles sting with cold. I don't feel any better about Jayita and my mom.

Colin's sitting on the ground, leaned up against the side of a bus, reading
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
.

“Hey you.” His eyes crinkle when he sees me. “Hey.” I go straight to him, fold into his jean-jacketed arms. I don't have to ask for permission anymore.

. . . . .

We don't go to his house. It's too far, too late already; I have to be back for Evening Program. We just drive the van a little off the grounds and park.

It's weird how once you've done it one time, it's just assumed you will again. It's like there's a threshold and every step leading up to it is a question, but then you cross that line and all the questions disappear. Dissolve into the ocean of divine bliss. Or something like that.

He goes right for my bra and then my zipper, takes everything off fast, pushes forward. Inside I want to say,
Wait, don't I get to decide again
? The deciding was part of it, the
Are you sure?
and
Do you want to?
and the saying
Yes
, and it doesn't seem quite right that that's just over now. Last time I knew I wanted to; this time, I'm not so sure. But he's not asking anymore and I can't find a space to say,
Stop
; there's nothing I can do but let it happen. The Allman Brothers blare through the speakers, guitars fast and jangly, weaving into interminable jams as my head spins out, his mouth pressing into mine, my head pressing into the wool-upholstered mattress in the van. It all happens too quick for my body to catch up; there's so much of everything so fast that it's hard for me to feel. The song stretches out and eventually he stops kissing me and closes his eyes.

I tell myself that it's enough that we're this close. I don't need to feel what he does; I don't need to always feel safe. It's enough that it's me in the back of his van, me he comes to pick up every day, me between him and the mattress. It's enough that he gives me all of him, and that he doesn't leave. The feeling of making him feel fills me up and I just concentrate on that, let it grow till he finishes and lowers down onto his elbows, sweaty and grinning. I made him do that. I can make someone feel things. That's all I have to do to make him stay.

When the tape ends and he pulls apart the green plaid wool curtains, it's dark again. Something about sex makes time work different, and I wonder if that's what they mean when they talk about timelessness, how past and future disappear and so do second hands, minute hands, hours, till all there is is one big giant
now
stretching out in all directions. “We better go,” I say. This time he stops short of the main entrance and thank god, because not only Ninyassa but Devanand are standing by the door. I keep my head forward as I walk toward them, acutely aware of my skin beneath my clothes. Ninyassa nods at me half distracted and turns back to her conversation. Devanand, in leggings and a turquoise turtleneck that swallows the beginnings of his beard, keeps his eyes fixed right on me. I want to flinch, look down, but I know I can't. “Hey, Tessa,” he says in that too-enthusiastic way of his. There's something sharp beneath it. “How's Grounds Crew
seva
going? Not so easy when the soil's frozen over, huh?”