Karma for Beginners (19 page)

It's like hide-and-seek and I'm cornered—there's nothing to do but let myself get caught. Fists pound. “
Tessa
!” It's my mom.

I twist open the lock, but I keep the shower on. That teary, pleading, deer-in-headlights lady from the Temple is gone, or turned inside out, or something. Her eyes blaze. She's just as unhinged, just as scary, but now she's filled up to the edges with mad. And it looks like she's mad at
me
. She storms in and grabs me by the arm, jerks me up and off the toilet hard enough to hurt.

The first thing I think is
Colin
; my mind starts scrolling through the million possible ways that she could know. The shower's still running, enveloping us in a hot cloud. My face is slick with sweat. Her nails are digging into my arm. “Mom, wait—”

“Goddamnit!” She wrenches the water off. Steam mats her hair around her face. “
Goddamnit
, Tessa. You little liar.”

I don't want to give myself away, so I play dumb. “Mom, what are you—”

“I just came from the front desk, Tessa. Do you know who called this afternoon?”

That's weird: Colin wouldn't call.

“How about a guess?”

I shake my head.

“Come on, Tessa, don't play dumb with me. You know what you did.”

I really don't. “I really don't—”

She looks at me like she wants to spit.

“You're going to make me say it. Okay. Fine. When I was on my way back from the Temple”—she looks away when she says
Temple
, like she's trying to hide what happened there—“Ninyassa called me to the desk. ‘You have a call,' she said.” She pauses like I'm gonna know who it was. I just look at her: I don't.

“It was your
father
.”

The bottom drops out from my stomach.

“That ring a bell?”

He called. I can't believe he called. So many feelings rush through my body I don't think I can hold them all, and all of them are opposites. I never knew you could be ashamed and overjoyed and terrified and embarrassed and excited and pissed off and grateful all at once. All I can think to say is one thing. It comes out quiet: “Did he call for me?”

She softens. Just a tiny bit. “No. No, Tessa. He didn't call for you.”

“But he must have—”

“Well, he called because you told him you were here, if that's what you mean. He got your
letter
. Care of his
record
company.” She looks at me like she knows everything, like she found out all my secrets and she is shoving them back inside me with her accusing beady eyes. “I heard you sent a few.”

I don't defend myself. Right now being in trouble with my mom is so much less important than knowing every single word my dad said in that call. “Then that means he called for me—” I can hear the desperation in my voice. It sounds a little like my mother in the Temple. I don't care.

“No, Tessa, it doesn't. He didn't ask for you. He didn't want to talk to you. Okay? Your dad was drunk. He called to yell at me.”

“Wait—”

“You went behind my back and did the one thing I've
ever
told you not to do! You
know
that we don't talk to him! There are reasons for that! There are—”

She's getting hysterical. I have to calm her down so she can tell me what he said.

“Look, Mom, I'm sorry, okay?” I'm not sorry. “I'm sorry I went behind your back. I missed him. He's my
dad
.” I use the tone of voice the swamis do. She slows down just a little. “What did he say?”

“He said what he always says, Tessa. That I'm an unfit, irresponsible mother. That he's sorry he ever met me; he should've skipped that stop on tour. This time, thanks to whatever you wrote to him, he said I'm in a
cult
. And he said to tell
my daughter
to quit bugging him.”

I feel like it's dodgeball and I didn't get out of the way fast enough, and some kid lobbed a hard one right into my gut. I stop breathing. I don't hold my breath; I just stop breathing. Even if I knew what to say, I can't talk.

“Sorry, Tessa. Sorry, okay? That's what I've been trying to tell you.”

And then she turns around and gathers up her things and says, “I have a private
darshan
now. He's giving me a special meditation, so I may be staying up at Guru's quarters for the evening.”

She fixes me in her gaze. “I think you have a lot to contemplate.”

. . .

The depths of hell and the heights of heaven exist within a single mind.

Colin is picking me up early this morning. I can't wait to get out of here; I even skipped breakfast. My hair's still wet from the shower. My mom didn't come home last night, of course, and I didn't sleep. All last night I just told myself over and over: in six hours you can talk to Colin. You can finally tell him everything. He'll help you understand.

At 8:05 a.m., the Spacemobile pulls up instead of Colin's van. Rush is playing. Clint is driving. “Hop in,” he says, and the passenger door swings open. Bennett slides over on the bench seat; Colin's in the back. They're all stoned as hell.

Shit.

“Let's get out of here,” I say, strapping myself in.
At least I'm leaving
, I tell myself.

“No way, man,” Clint says. “We gotta see this place.”

“Dude, totally,” Bennett says.

“We're takin' a tour.” Clint revs what's left of the engine and drives straight toward the main building.

“You guys, come on, what are you doing?” I say.

“She's worried, man!” Bennett says. “That's 'cause it's an
adventure
. Adventures are scary sometimes!”

“I'm not worried,” I say, even though I'm completely terrified. Clint and Bennett and wake-and-bake plus the ashram is a recipe for disaster. I try to sound blasé. “It's just lame here. We should go.”

“Dude, no way, man,” Clint says. “We've been hearing about this place for like a year. It's Crazy Central. All those chicks in robes? We gotta take a look.”

We are clattering down the bus route to Shanti Kutir and I am freaking out inside. “Let's just go,” I say. “Get something to eat or something.”

“Nuh-uh.” Clint is resolute. “Colin finally agreed to give us the tour. We're not passing that one up.”

I spin around toward the backseat, shoot Colin a look. He just shrugs. All I want in the entire world is to get out of here, and he's going to get me killed.

“Come on, you guys. I'm gonna get in trouble.”

Clint turns to me, smirking, a glint in his eye. “Don't you worry, little lady. We'll protect you.”

Somehow that isn't particularly comforting.

We drive the entire bus route, past the Amrit and Shanti Kutir, the parking lot and the dorms. Clint and Bennett laugh, talking about the devotees' outfits and women that are hot.

“So what, is everyone here married to each other like a commune or some shit?” Clint asks me.

“Yeah, are they?” Bennett asks.

“
No
,” I say, puffing up. “It's not like that.” I don't like them talking about the people here. Not that I don't hate them all. But I
know
them. They don't.

“Well then, what? Does everybody do, like, mind-control experiments?”

“No.” I roll my eyes. “No. I don't want to talk about it. Can we just go, please?”

“Whoa,” Clint says to Bennett, who raises his eyebrows. “I think the little lady's mad.”

“I'm not mad.”

“C'mon, little lady. We'll find something fun to do.”

I do not want to find something fun to do. I want to get out of here. People are starting to stream out of the buildings, headed toward the dining hall for breakfast. I sink down in my seat. The Spacemobile pulls up to the courtyard of gods.

“Wow,” Bennett says.

“Awesome,” Clint says. “Look at that fuckin' elephant!”

Colin doesn't say anything. He's stoned out of his mind, spacing to the music, useless.

“Yeah, that's Ganesh,” I say. Maybe a little information will satisfy them. “He's the remover of obstacles. You're supposed to pray to him for help with stuff in your life.”

“Weird, man,” Bennett says.

“Look at
that
!” Clint points at the statue of Kali Ma. Kali Ma is the destroyer goddess: she wears a necklace of skulls and a skirt made of arms and no shirt, standing on the body of Shiva with her tongue sticking out.

“Nice tits,” Bennett says.

I'm not superstitious and I know that gods are symbols, but everybody says you do not want to piss off Kali Ma.

“You shouldn't say that,” I tell Bennett. He looks at me like I'm crazy.

“Dude, who's that?” Clint asks, nodding toward Gandhi. “He looks fuckin' hungry.”

“He's got the munchies!” Bennett giggles.

“That's
Gandhi
,” I say. “Haven't you heard of Gandhi? He was like Martin Luther King but for India, in, like, the thirties?”

“He's fuckin' skinny, man,” Clint says.

“Yeah, he's skinny because he went on hunger strikes.”

“Nah, dude, he's skinny cause he's got the
munchies
,” Bennett insists.

“He needs some Cheetos,” Clint says. “And a Big Gulp.”

“Dude!” Bennett says. “We gotta take Gandhi for some Cheetos!”

“Man!” Clint says, jaw dropping. “You are
right!
”

Wait. What are they talking about?

“That's what the Spacemobile is for, man. Good deeds.”

“Good deeds.” Clint puts the van in park but leaves it running.

“Wait, hang on,” I say before he can leave the van.

“What are you guys doing?”

“Feeding the hungry!”

I turn toward the backseat. “Colin!” I say. He doesn't open his eyes.

“
Colin
! They're taking Gandhi!”

He lifts his head six inches, peers at me through heavy lids. “That's cool, man.”

“No, it's not cool! There are people everywhere!

We're gonna get
arrested
!”

“Dude, chill out. It's cool. It'll totally be fine.” And he lays his head back on the seat.

Clint and Bennett are outside the van already. If I yell I'll only draw attention. Clint's digging at the feet of Gandhi with a stick; Bennett grabs Gandhi's head and wrestles him up. Apparently I have to keep lookout, since no one else is going to. We're half hidden by a hedge, but Clint and Bennett are making grunty noises and at least two people crane their necks to try and see around the hedge.

“
Psst
,” I whisper loud through the open window. “
Hey
.” Bennett turns around. “People can see you.”

“Okay, hurry up,” he says, and starts yanking harder; Clint kicks the bottom of the statue till it finally breaks free.

“All right, one, two,
three
,” he says, and they hoist Gandhi onto their shoulders, head back toward the van.

“Open open open!” Clint yells; I sit there frozen.

“The back!”

Colin's clearly not gonna get up to open the door. I just want to get us out of here. I run to the back and open the latch; Clint and Bennett heave Gandhi up and throw him in. He hits the metal of the van, making a horrible clanging noise.

“Run!” Bennett says; they slam the doors, we pile in, and Clint steps on the gas.

They're all cracking up, of course, practically falling over themselves as we speed down the bus route. Clint's eyes squeeze shut from silent-painful laugh, and once I even have to grab the wheel to keep him from swerving.

“Did you see that, Tessa? Did you—” Clint hollers.

“Just
drive
,” I say through clenched teeth.

He heads straight for the main entrance, where there are about a million people. I hold my breath and shrink down in my seat. A familiar voice yells, “Hey!” and in the rearview mirror someone chases us, but the transmission drowns it out and we speed past, hurtling toward the highway, Gandhi crashing in the back.

On the road the guys roll down the windows and yell.

“Wooh!” they howl, faces aimed into the wind. I roll my eyes and shake my head. Clint reaches across Bennett to poke my ribs. “Hey,” he says. “We got away!”

“Hooray.”

“Aw, c'mon. Wasn't it a
little
awesome?”

“No.”

“Not even when we hurled him in the back?”

“No.”

“Not even when we drove past all those ashram people chasing after us? ‘
Hey! Wait! Stop!
'” He imitates them running after us, making a spaz-out face. I laugh a little, in spite of myself.

“See?” he says, poking me again. “See, it's fun.” He smiles at me.

Finally I decide to let him win me over. It's easier than trying to fight. “Okay.” We round a bend; Gandhi clunks against the wall.

At Colin's, they unload the statue while I smoke up. If I can't talk to Colin about last night, then what I need is to forget. I need to make myself go away. I need to blot it out, blur everything till you can't make out the outlines and it all just runs together. I polish off three bowls by myself, until my head is thick enough that I can tell myself I just dreamed the temple and the guru and my mother and my dad. Until everything that's happened to me dissolves, and I'm not carrying it inside me anymore, and all that's left is what's happening just exactly now. I make a promise to myself: Today, just for today, there will be no such thing as memory. No such thing as stuff that happened in the past. No people except the ones I'm in the room with. All that will exist will be what's happening in this moment, here and now. Everything else is dust.

I let go of myself and give the morning over to the guys. We stopped at 7-Eleven on the way, and now the guys spend at least an hour building an elaborate shrine in the yard: a ring of Ding Dongs encircles Gandhi's feet, a Big Gulp perches precariously on his head, and he's festooned with Cheetos. Everyone thinks this is hilarious. I sort of like Gandhi—the person, not the statue—so I wonder if it's disrespectful. I'm stoned enough to recognize that it is kind of incredible, though.

“Good deeds!” Bennett yells, and high-fives Colin when they're done.

“Attention, all,” Clint calls out in a fake town-crier voice. “Please gather round for an important announcement.” Everyone just stares at him. He waves us over. “I said,
Please gather round
.” Bennett finishes the Cheetos; I put down the bong and head toward the guys.

With a flourish, Clint produces a tiny Baggie from his pocket. It's folded in half and then in half again, so small you can't imagine it's even holding anything. “I have here”—another flourish—“your tickets to a new reality.”

“Aw, man, you scored,” Bennett says. “No shit. Really?”

“Really,” Clint says with a nod.

“That is
awesome
,” Colin says, slightly sobered up and more awake.

“What?” I ask. Everyone seems to know what Clint's talking about but me.

“Oh, Tessa.” Colin turns to me. “You're gonna
love
this.”

“Really?” What am I gonna love?

“Oh my god. Yes. Totally.”

“What is it?”

“Have you ever heard of acid?”

“What, like battery acid?”

He laughs. “No. Like LSD.”

I
have
heard of LSD, in junior high health class when we had two weeks about dangerous chemical drugs. Mr. Fishman said that people take it and jump off buildings, thinking they can fly; he said some people scratch their skin away, sure they're covered with bugs. He also said there are people who never come down. I pretended I was taking notes while I imagined unseen bugs crawling on my skin forever, how terrifying it would be to take a pill and never get my brain back.

“Oh. Wow. Isn't it—scary?”

Colin's eyes are wide and focused. “No. Totally not. It's
amazing
.”

“Aren't there—don't you think there are bugs on you and stuff?”

Colin shakes his head. “Urban legend, man. Just like the perpetual-tripping myth. Everyone knows someone who knows some guy who dropped too much and tripped forever, but the secret is it's all the same guy. And he doesn't exist.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Because in health class—”

“Propaganda, dude,” Clint interrupts. “What'd they tell you about weed in health class?”

He's right: they told us marijuana leads to heroin use, erases your memory, and turns you psychotic.

“Hm. Then what's it like?”

“Oh,
man
,” Bennett says.

“Wooh,” Clint says.

“Basically it's like waking up a whole new brain you didn't even know you had,” Colin says, and grins.

“Wow. Like what kind of brain?”

“Like the
awesome
kind,” Bennett snorts.

“Have you ever heard of that saying, We only use ten percent of our minds? It's like all of a sudden you've got access to the other ninety. And it's totally beautiful. Like you can finally
see
.”

My mom said that when we first got to the ashram:
I can finally see
. I wonder if acid is like the stuff she talked about: electricity flowing through you, a liquid silence ocean. I wonder if I'll finally find out what she meant. “Is it like the universe and stuff?”

All three guys laugh. “Exactly. That's exactly it.”

“It's like the universe,” Clint says, as he reaches into the tiny bag with tweezers and pulls out a square of paper. “Open wide,” he says, and sets it on my tongue.

For almost an hour and a half I don't feel anything. I keep telling the guys there's something wrong, but they keep telling me to chill out. “It takes at
least
an hour. Minimum,” Colin says. “Sometimes longer.”

At approximately eighty-six minutes I feel a weird feeling. It's kind of like too much coffee but there's a chemical part too, a clangy feeling in my nose and mouth. “Drink some orange juice,” Clint says. “It'll make it come on harder.”

He hands me the carton and I chug. The juice is viscous and tangy. Somehow I can feel it in the inside of my skull. My mouth gets thick and sticky and I smack my lips.