Picking Bones from Ash (25 page)

For a time, things did seem to go back to the way they had been. Snowden-roshi completed his move from Los Angeles, and moved into his new quarters at the Stillness Center. The statue disappeared and when I checked the floorboards in the secret room, I found it empty. The
kannon
was gone and I wondered if we could go back to the way things had been before.

Then one night a few months later, I had my answer. I woke up drenched in sweat from a nightmare whose details I did not completely remember. Moonlight sliced the curtains and struck my bedroom floor at acute
angles. In the night, the colors of my room had been stripped down to shades of black, white, and blue. Silver objects pierced through the dull navy glow—a doorknob, a pair of earrings, the glint of a tin picture frame. Shadows blossomed in the corners, a meadow of tiny black-and-white fists ripe for harvest.

The air grew thick and cold, as though I had been wrapped in a chilled velvet blanket. I heard the brush of footsteps. I sat up, my body suspended by invisible arms. “Rumi,” a voice whispered near my ear. “Rumi,” it said again. It was a woman’s voice, accented and absent of diphthongs. The first syllable came out past the top of her palate, with the
r
a cross between an
r
and an
l
. The second syllable echoed through the apartment. “Rumi-
mi
.” The sounds collided and chased each other away.

It was the sound I had waited to hear all my life.

“Mother?” I asked.

The invisible arms directed me out of the bed and I began to follow the footsteps out into the hallway. The same force that had churned the air into such a thick consistency had also coaxed the threads of the hallway carpet to grow. They were now knee-high, and I staggered through this swamp a step at a time. Instinctively, I put my hand out against the wall to push my body along. The surface was icy and slick like the frozen flesh of a melon. My fingers yielded to the cold and grew stiff, and soon I could no longer feel the wall at all.

“Rumi-
mi-mi
,” the voiced bounced around me.
“Me me me.”

“I’m coming.” My breath collected into silver halos.

Even as my feet stuck to the cold floorboards in the living room, I felt a heat of pride blossom in my stomach and stretch out into my limbs. I knew that the cold could not hurt me. I would be triumphant.

A chandelier of sharp stars illuminated the living room. “Rumi,” the voice called from behind. I turned my head.

“Where are you?”

The two candles on the altar flared.

“Haaaaa.”
Cold air exhaled against the back of my neck.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Wind circled through the room, disturbing the candles. They fluttered violently, butterflies trapped in a place.

Then there was something wrong with the candles. There was too much smoke and it was all thick and black. I could not control it. My eyes watered. Corners of objects blurred.

New sounds pierced the wind. Reeds whistled high and sharp. Drums
throbbed through the floorboards as though the very room I stood in was the chamber of a heart. And soaring above these sounds, the crisp, metallic cry of crickets and birds. A sound just this side of music. The reedy, nasal twang of the animals swelled, as though their lungs had expanded, and suddenly the sound became a chorus of pipes hugging the shifting contours of a tune. The shape of the music twisted through the room, running like a brook, wrapping around my ankles, upsetting my balance.

“Wait. Please slow down,” I said.

The music ran and ran through the room, and the shapes on the altar blurred and shifted, like high-speed film. The Buddha became a living man, then a woman, then a figure with three heads, then a man again. The gong became a light, a cluster of fireflies, a tree in blossom. The walls of the living room dissolved.

I was sweating. No, I was dancing. Spinning and jumping.

Something lay against my neck. Something solid, and coiled, like a rope. I looked at my right shoulder. A long black plait of hair hung over my collarbone and dangled against my breast. Then the plait moved, retreating like a snake across my neck and down my back.

The music stopped. I turned around. It was so quiet. Peaceful and cold. I was on a hill. No—a tiny planet. Darkness dripped over my head and down past my feet. And then, just above my line of vision, I saw the pale, luminescent ripple of a sail. I looked up.

A woman contemplated me, head tilted to the side. Her feet were hidden inside the folds of a long white
kimono
whose thin edges flapped frantically like a moth trapped against the walls of a tin box. I could see her hands desperately clutching the frayed edges of her sleeves and collar. I had the impression that if she did not hold the robe in place, it would fly away and the rest of her would disappear as well, as though this white garment was the only thing anchoring her to one spot.

Her dark, unruly hair spewed out in all directions like black ink run amok on a piece of white paper. In the first few seconds when we looked at each other, I saw her eyes flicker with curiosity. She leaned forward and peered at me with the cold dignity of a satellite sent down to inspect the earth. She was beautiful, with a small, round face, a tiny mouth, and tiny, delicate teeth. I began to weep. When my eyes were free of tears, I saw that she had grown older—more gaunt and haggard—as though those few seconds of expressing her personality had exhausted her. Would I, too, look
like this one day? One of her hands loosened its grip from the folds of her kimono. The tissue trembled and parted, revealing the sharp point of her collarbone. She reached out to me, then her hand drifted off to the side, palm open.

She swayed overhead, and I heard a sound like wood creaking. I swiveled around, keeping the ghost in view, even as she moved around in a circle. She seemed to be enjoying the entertainment, having fun leading me around like this. I remained as focused as I could, watching her. After a while, she drifted down to my level, perhaps only a few feet away. And I began to find that I wasn’t scared of her. Not exactly. In awe perhaps, but not afraid.

“Come on,” I whispered. “What do you have to show me?”

She seemed to understand, and her face took on a look of deep sorrow. She drifted through the house. I followed her to the front door, where she disappeared.

I cursed, mashed my feet into a pair of slippers, and went outside. For a moment, I couldn’t see. It was so dark outside. Then my eyes adjusted.

I saw the ghost, half a block away, blending into the moss of an oak tree. I ran after her.

It was a serene time to be awake. The clubs and nighttime partiers had gone home. The homeless people in Golden Gate Park were starting to retreat to the trees to sleep. The only roar coming from the city streets was that of the ocean, kneading away at the beaches and embankments. Far off in the distance I could hear the foghorn warning boats off shallow ground, and the sound fused with another tone, a version of the high, reedy music I’d heard in the living room.

The ghost flew ahead of me, like a sail on a ship. I was so focused on her, I barely noticed the effort it took to climb up and down the angled streets. It was as though I, too, were flying with her. I swept by cars parked like dominoes ready for toppling, side by side and at a tilt. The bodegas in the Mission were shuttered, though occasionally I passed an open window rasping the refrain of a Mexican song, desperate in its longing for home. In these quiet and silver hours, the Victorians were less colorful, their plumage muted, as though, like electric birds in some imaginary tropical forest, they had toned down their feathers while they slept.

Every now and then a vehicle—a taxi or a cop car—glided along. But
no one stopped to talk to me. I had the sense that the city was sleeping, all the bodies breathing in and out in the same pace, just like the ocean pulsing evenly from far across the Pacific till it met the land. A great feeling of peace came over me as I scaled the hills, first up, then down, then up again.

At last the ghost stopped moving. I realized that I had entered the Sunset District. We were closer to the ocean here, and already I could see the horizon begin to lighten, the first feathers of light sprouting in patches of pink and coral on the eastern hills.

The ghost was hovering over a brick building that looked very much out of place against the modest rows of two-story Victorians that were so common in this part of the city. As the sun rose, it caught the corner of a brass plate tacked beside a door.

“The San Francisco Stillness Zen Center.”

I shot a look back up at the ghost. She seemed to smile at me, and then she melted into the roof of the structure. The sun was really rising now, heating up the particles in the air, turning the brick building from gray to bronze. As if on cue, I heard the sound of men and women chanting. Still dressed in my nightgown, I pushed open the door and went inside.

I knew something of the history of the Stillness Center from neighborhood gossip and news programs. A group of Japanese Americans had bought the four-story brick structure in the thirties. It had originally been built to serve as an institutional facility for single Jewish women, and this accounted for its many dorm rooms, the kitchen, inner courtyard, and assembly hall; the latter was now used by Buddhist students as a meditation center.

Large arched windows gave the entire structure a sunny disposition. The inside smelled of fresh white paint. As I wended my way through the corridors, I saw dozens of students, some whose faces were familiar. But there were many more I had never seen before. All were moving slowly and thoughtfully in one direction. I followed them to a set of double doors flung open to reveal the meditation room.

It was a fairly plain space, spare, but filled with people seated on small square mats. They were chanting. I was so overcome from the long walk, the sound of these voices, and the sudden rush I felt from the sun, that I almost forgot the reason I was here. In the presence of so many living
people, I felt as though the ghost were from some strange nightmare and I’d followed it until morning and sanity had descended on me.

A young man met me just inside the door and placed a finger to his lips, then knelt down to retrieve a meditation mat from a stack he had beside him. He held the mat out to me and I took it from him and began to thread my way through the meditators, looking for a small spot for myself. I found a place at the back and settled down, marveling that my nightgown really didn’t look all that out of place amid these men and women wearing robes in gray and brown.

On the far end of the room was an elevated podium, perhaps two feet off the ground. Half a dozen men and one woman were seated there, their eyes closed, their mouths moving in time to the
sutra
. In the very center of this group sat a man, his lips fixed in a half smile, even while he chanted. His pale face and self-assured quietness struck a nerve deep within my body.

It was Snowden-roshi.

Light streamed in from the tall windows, nearly flush to the ceiling. I looked up and saw a tall wooden case before me. I hadn’t seen it when I’d first looked into the room because I’d approached the hall from the side and thus had apprehended the case only at an angle. But now I had a full view of its contents. In the top shelf was some kind of black-and-white document, written in Japanese.

And below this, rooted in place as though she’d always been there, was the
kannon
.

An invisible being sucked out the air from the space directly in front of me. I tilted forward and felt a cold breath press against my forehead. I could feel one of the
kannon
’s thousand arms reaching out to save me. The sun, now bursting through the windows, highlighted her nimbus as though it were rising specifically for her.

“What are you doing there?” I whispered to her.

But she was caught behind the glass and I couldn’t hear what she said. I started to feel ill and began to breathe out of rhythm with the rest of the group. Then I was perspiring, breaking into a cold sweat. I stood up suddenly, knocking into the man seated in front of me. He turned to see who had struck him, thus disturbing the woman to his left. A small sea of heads broke their concentration and turned to look at us. Others followed suit. By the time Snowden-roshi opened his eyes to see what had dampened the
enthusiasm of his followers, I had regained my composure. I left the mat where it was on the floor and strode out into the middle of the temple to face him.

He said, “Good morning. You know, we always welcome beginners.” He realized who I was and seemed momentarily to lose his composure. Then he nodded at me as though we were complicit in some joke the others in the room would only now understand. He stood up, went over to the case, and pulled the
kannon
out with one hand, beckoning me with the other to come stand beside him.

“I would have come to you eventually, you know. But I am glad you are here.” He turned the figure over gingerly, so I saw the underside of her base. There was a panel here, which he twisted and removed. Then he shook the statue, and a small red box fell into the palm of his hand. He handed the box and panel to me. I opened the box and started at the sight of a small piece of bone inside. Next, I examined the piece of wood. There in the center was a stamp. I could just make out the faded characters: Muryojuji temple.

“The thing is, Rumi, I can’t go to Japan,” Snowden-roshi said quietly, “But you, Rumi, you can go.”

Satomi

Tokyo, 1968

The Japanese criminal justice system has a conviction rate of nearly 100 percent. This is because we are a thorough people and only the guilty are ever arrested. No one I knew had ever been in trouble with the law before, and I couldn’t help but think that Timothy must have done something very wrong or the police wouldn’t have come for him in the first place. I’d gone to a foreign country and had the self-control not to do anything illegal. Even when the French had picked on me, I had at least behaved with dignity.