The Good Sister (6 page)

“All of you, outside now!” Our grandmother continued pointing at the door, her posture alone enough to convince us she wasn't joking.

So I took Asha's hand in mine and we went, shuffling one by one out onto the front entryway, which had a shallow overhang that provided almost no shelter from the slanting rain. Rachel was the last to exit, and she was unable to resist slamming the door behind her.

There we stayed, huddled against each other, teeth chattering until our father found us after what felt like hours later but was probably not so long. He insisted we leave Grandmother's house that night, and we did. I've never stayed here again since, nor have I ever wanted to.

But that was years ago, before Lena and Ravi divorced, and before Lena discovered that her mother was our only reliable means of financial support.

So the last day that we visited her, I found myself sitting at her sleek, expensive teakwood dining-room table, staring out at the bay through the window, while my mother spoke in hushed tones to Grandma in the next room.

This was the drill. I had to stay out of things unless Grandma started getting angry. Lena didn't like being seen groveling.

I was thinking about David (the love of my short life), wondering if he was out of his printmaking class yet, about to get out my phone and send him a text, when my grandmother wheeled into the room. I wondered for a moment if she'd finally gotten fed up with my mother and pushed her off the balcony, but I later learned that Lena had, at the last second, decided to tell my grandmother that I was the reason she needed money this time.

It wasn't exactly a lie. I had outlived everyone's expectations, and my parents now found that their oldest daughter was about to go on to college, and they hadn't bothered creating a college fund for me since I was supposed to die anyway. I'd gotten an acceptance letter from UC Santa Cruz the day before, and it had prompted me to ask my mother if she'd be able to help me pay for school.

This simple question had sent her to bed in tears for the rest of the day, claiming she had a migraine. This was how Lena dealt with most problems. She wasn't cut out for life off the commune, or life as the mother of a child with leukemia, or life in general.

“So,” my grandmother said to me in her slight Dutch accent, “you have defied all the odds and are going on to college. What a wonderful thing.”

“I got accepted to three schools so far,” I said, adopting the pleasant, deferent tone I always used with her.

“Your mother tells me you still want to be a nurse.”

I nodded.

“Why not a doctor?”

People had never asked me questions like this before now—what do you want to be when you grow up? Being known as the Kid Who Has Cancer was, for a long time, my lot in life, and even when it wasn't, people still tiptoed around me, as if the shadow of death lingered near.

“I want to help people in a hands-on way.” This was my simple, standard answer. I'd never had to try hard to make good grades in school, so perhaps my grandmother thought I should strive for the greatest academic challenge. Or maybe she was just being contrary.

She gave a curt nod. “You're too pretty to be a doctor anyway. No one could take you seriously.”

I knew better than to react to this. Lena relied on me as the one who didn't let Grandma push her buttons.

“How are you feeling? Still sore from your fall?”

I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back, I can see that this was my subtle way of getting her back. While Grandma loved to talk about her ailments, anyone else's bringing them up always made her feel weak and vulnerable. I watched her shrink back into her chair a bit, looking tired. Then I felt bad for my spite.

“No need to discuss an old woman's frailties,” she surprised me by saying. “The more important matter is this issue of your college education. How do you intend to pay for it?”

“I'll work, I guess, and get college loans.”

“And your father? Is he going to help?”

I hadn't been speaking to Ravi lately, not since I'd seen him walking down the street holding hands with a girl who looked to be about four years older than me at most.

“I'm not depending on it,” I said, though I would likely ask him for help eventually, once I'd decided for sure which school to attend. He wasn't comfortable with loose ends.

“I'll be very upset if I pay for your education and you go and die before you get to use it.”

I hadn't been expecting such a backhanded comment, and I sat there stunned, unsure what to say. How great did the risk of my cancer's relapsing have to be before I wasn't worth spending college-tuition money on?

Part of me wanted to stand up and leave, tell her to stick her money up her ass, but I knew the real reason we were there wasn't just about college money. It was about my mother needing money to pay the rent, and if I blew it now, we'd spend the next month eating nothing but ramen noodles and avoiding angry calls from the landlord.

Also, because this often meant my middle sister, Rachel, and I coughing up our own money to pay for food and other essentials, I was doubly motivated.

“I'll try my best not to die,” I said evenly, meeting her eye and almost smiling as I said it.

Satisfied with that, she nodded and wheeled herself back out of the room. A minute later, I could hear her and Lena talking again in hushed tones, probably haggling over the amount of the check grandma was writing.

Because no one was yelling or slamming doors, I knew this visit had been a success.

I got out my cell phone and began composing a text to David:
R u free?
I typed, then hit send.

I used to think I wanted to be a doctor, but the more time I spent in hospitals, the more I saw that the people who made a difference were the nurses. A few of those who'd helped me over the years were my heroes, angels who'd swooped in and offered soothing words and gentle touches when I'd been in the worst pain of my life.

I wanted to be one of them. When I was younger and still believed in God with a capital
G,
it was partly because I thought if I was a good enough person, maybe God would let me stay alive longer. Maybe he or she or it would make the cancer go away for good. I used to think we had to bargain our way through the world, trading good deeds for good luck, but now I know it's not that way at all.

I spent my whole life trying so hard to be good, and in the end it didn't matter.

My cell phone chirped to let me know that David had texted me back. I looked at the message:
We r all free—
his little bit of phonetically spelled philosophy.

I wished I could be as hopeful as he was, but I wasn't. I could hear Lena and Grandma de Graas still murmuring in the next room, two people bound by love and hate, tangled in family ties. Just like my sisters and me. Just like all of us.

And here I am now, where we are supposed to be truly free (or at least that's what we assume about death, don't we?), still bound to the people I left behind.

Ten

Rachel

I have spent most of my life rolling my eyes at the spiritual-seeking crap that surrounds us in Marin County. Meditation and chakras and all that.

But when I am sitting in the dining room of the meditation center with Krishna, and I look around at the people smiling and talking, I feel kind of curious about them. Like, who are they and why the hell are they here and not at the mall?

I stand in line and get a plate of food, then take a seat at a table where some other hippies are already sitting and talking. Krishna tells me he will be right back.

The scent of incense and curry are heavy in the air, which is probably a good thing since I doubt any of these people wear deodorant. I pretend to be interested in my food, take a few bites, stir it around.

“Are you enjoying the feast?” Krishna asks as he sits down beside me.

Why do vegetarians always call it a feast? It's not like anyone's roasted a goddamn pig or anything.

“Yeah, it's good. Thanks.” The lentil stew is heavy on the spice and coconut milk, and it's served over the ever-present brown rice. But it's okay. It's the first thing I've eaten since Sarah's death that I think I've sort of tasted.

“What did you think of the meditation session?” he asks.

I would like to say it was stupid, that I got nothing out of sitting for a half hour trying not to think, but I feel … the opposite of that. Ever since the session ended, I've felt this sort of crazy calm, like I've been drugged.

“It was hard to do … but I liked it.”

“Monkey mind. We all struggle with it. It's a term to describe how our mind always wants to jump from thought to thought. We handle it by simply noticing when the mind starts to wander and gently returning to our focus on the mantra.”

I can't believe I am seriously having a conversation with someone about meditating and mantras. Part of me wants to laugh, and part of me is just here.

Being.

I feel sort of good and not panicky for the first time in a long time.

“I'll try to remember that,” I say.

“Does that mean you might join us again sometime?” he says with a little smile.

He is so freaking gorgeous, I'd probably agree to celibacy for the next year if I thought it might eventually lead to something with him, but the way he asks me the question, it's not like he's trying to sell me on Buddhism or get in my pants. It's like he genuinely wants to know.

“I think so,” I say, surprising myself.

“I'd like that. Would you like a tour of the center?”

I say I would, and we carry our dishes to the kitchen where we each wash and dry our stuff and put it all back in the cabinets like good little pseudo-Buddhists.

Then he leads me out of the dining room into the main entry area and through the front door. From there we head down a path that passes the parking lot and goes off into an open field dotted with boulders, trees, and cows. We are walking into a postcard of Marin.

“This is one of the paths where we do walking meditation,” he says as he walks beside me. “It's a style of meditation that you can employ anywhere, but it helps if it's a quiet place, free of distraction.”

“How did you end up here?” I ask him, genuinely curious.

He smiles, and my stomach does a flip. “I wasn't always disciplined about my spiritual path. I told you about my heroin-addict days. When I got clean, I knew I had to do something drastically different. I'd been a Buddhist since my teens but not serious about it, and then I signed up for a weekend meditation workshop here, and the rest is history.”

“And now you run the place and never have sex?”

He laughs. “No, I'm just a resident instructor. My celibacy is part of my own self-directed spiritual path.”

I say nothing because I feel stupid for bringing up his lack of a sex life now. Something about him is so serene, so open and genuine, it wipes away all my crap. He's not like anyone else I've ever met, and because I know we can't have sex, I kind of just want to observe him and see what kind of magic he has that might rub off on me.

We wander along the path and take a short walk back toward the main buildings. He shows me the dorm areas, the campground, and the main offices. We end up back at the main entrance where we started.

My gaze lands on a job-notice flyer sitting on the front counter.

“I don't suppose you're looking for work?” he says.

The flyer says they have an opening for a full-time front-desk receptionist. I don't know what to say. Could I be a receptionist, smiling and answering phones and being nice to neurotic rich people and hippies all day?

It is so far from my idea of the job I belong in, I almost laugh, but something about Krishna makes me not want to hurt his feelings, so I don't.

“Hmm, I don't really have any experience other than serving coffee.”

He smiles. “Well, think about it and let me know if you decide you're interested. I have a feeling it would be a good fit for you.”

I don't know what to say to this, so I say nothing. Part of me is flattered he wants to give me a job, and part of me is trying to imagine my future.

“What are your plans now that you've finished high school?” He leads me toward the meditation room where we spent a half hour before dinner sitting silently and with our eyes closed.

It seems like an odd question for a Buddhist monk. Aren't they supposed to be all about the present moment? What does he care about my future?

But why don't
I
care? That's the bigger question. I think of Sarah, the hike, and everything that went so wrong so fast, and I know I don't believe I deserve to be planning for a future now.

“I don't know,” I say, wishing I had a better answer.

We are alone in the meditation room now, and he sits down on a cushion and invites me to sit on one opposite him. In all my vast life experience, this is the part where we get naked and screw each other's brains out, and I would definitely go there with Krishna, but I am sure now that's not what he has in mind for me.

I feel the wall that I always have up between me and the rest of the world crumbling down, brick by brick.

The room is so quiet, in spite of the people still milling about the center outside the door. Early-evening light comes through the large windows that line one wall and reflects off the shiny wood floor. Something about that light makes my chest ache like I just got some shitty news.

“Have you ever looked at someone and known they have an important purpose in your life?”

“No,” I say without thinking about it. Then I think of the way I so easily went with Krishna and came out to this place, not a single eye roll the entire time, and I consider changing my answer.

But before I can, he says, “I saw you on the sidewalk, and I didn't know what sort of tragedy you were experiencing, but I knew I was supposed to stop and talk to you.”