This was my tenth birthday.
Who was I, anyway, who wanted to write?
Part Two
BY ACCIDENT, NOT intended, not even wanted, I had a deep awakening experience in front of a sixth-grade class I was teaching in the Northwest Valley in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I was wearing a white button-down blouse, gray slacks. I had my hair pulled back with a barrette. I stood near the third row, the blackboard with a map of the world pulled down was behind me, and I was twenty-six years old. I was an ardent atheist—only “lit-er-a-chure” would save me. I had studied Descartes, Kant, Plato. I believed in reason, rationality. I had been hired in the middle of the school year; the veteran teacher of eleven years had quit because she couldn’t control this particular group of Hispanic and Indian kids, and I was next in line to try my fortitude and courage. This was my first time in a contracted teacher’s position. I had received my teaching certification six months before, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I said yes immediately when Mr. Jones, the school district personnel manager, called me. He said the other teacher was taking a leave of absence to pursue a Ph.D. It wasn’t true. She told me she was beat, exhausted, and she also told me which kids to watch out for, when I visited the class on her last day of duty. I wasn’t even supposed to teach English, the only thing I knew. I was supposed to teach social studies, a subject I knew nothing about, but I tried. I was in New Mexico, naive about the state, its culture and customs.
That morning, three men in suits had appeared at our classroom door. They knocked.
“Yes,” I said, “please, class, be still.” The class was never still. They did not become still then either, but they were curious. They half sat in their seats.
“We’re from Cuba,” one of the men said. “We’re here to study your school.”
“Cuba! Come in. Come in.” I ran to the blackboard and stood before the world map.
“Now who can point out Cuba for me?”
Skinny Roberto ran down the aisle between two rows of desks. He pointed his finger to Costa Rica. I adjusted it to Cuba.
“Yes, that’s it.” I turned to the three men. “How did you pick our school?”
They look bewildered. One said, “Our principal sent us,” and they quickly excused themselves.
The lunch bell rang. The kids ran out the door. I went to the teacher next door.
“Mrs. Martinez, you’re not going to believe this. There were three men here from Cuba! Can you imagine? They picked our school.”
She looked up from her desk. She was about to pop a Chiclet into her mouth.
“Miss Goldberg, they came from Cuba, New Mexico. Not Havana, Cuba. Cuba’s a small town north of here.”
“Oh,” I said, and backed out of her class. My face turned red.
I sat down at the steel desk in my classroom, opened a drawer, took out a container and scooped strawberry yogurt into my mouth. I rubbed the chest bone over my heart. It was sore. The night before I had been so busv writing a short story about my grandfather’s orange bowl that I forgot two eggs I’d left on the stove to boil. Suddenly I smelled something burning and jerked up from my desk and bolted into the kitchen. As I turned the corner I ran into the refrigerator; the handle hit me hard in the chest. I fell back, staggered, and saw stars. They were the same stars I’d seen the weekend before on a wall painting at the palm reader’s.
I had been driving down highway 25 just outside of Albuquerque when I passed a small adobe house with a huge white sign of a red hand with red lettering, Know Your Future. I quickly swung into the driveway. I thought to myself, what are you doing? I don’t believe in this.
I knocked at the door. A seventeen-year-old Chicano girl answered. I lied and said I was a student, so I could get the two-dollar discount she told me about. I followed her through a dining room, past a brown velvet couch, a television set, and a black velvet painting of a tiger hanging on a yellow wall, and into a back room separated from the rest of the house by a curtain of beads.
Christ, a wood sculpture of his head, was on the wall, and next to it that painting of gold stars on a blue-black background.
I thought, oh, Jesus, I don’t believe in this.
She told me to hold out my hand.
I held it out.
“Um, you’re very sure of yourself. Your whole way of seeing and understanding is going to change.”
Oh, yeah, I thought. “When’s this going to happen?”
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
“Very, very soon.”
I rolled my eyes. I argued with her. That wasn’t going to happen. “Anything else?” I asked.
“You’re going to go someplace you’ve never been before. Where you know no one. Into the deep north. You’ll do this for the love of a man.” She held my hand.
Oh, brother, I thought. I was a strong feminist. I wasn’t going to drop everything for a man. “Yeah, when will this happen?” I asked.
“Not for a long while. In the future.”
I had had enough. I pulled my hand away. I put it forward again. I started to ask about writing, I pulled it back again.
I paid her the three dollars and left and forgot about it.
When I ran into the refrigerator handle, I remembered the palm reader, the dusty road, the turquoise sky, the rock cliffs behind her house, and the star painting behind her left shoulder.
Stunned, I turned off the stove. The egg shells were burned brown and the pot was black. There was an awful smell in my apartment. I threw the eggs and pot in the garbage.
My chest still hurt. I had fifteen minutes before the kids returned to the class. There were paper planes on the floor, at least fourteen of them. Paper clips, textbooks, pencils, empty Frito-Lay orange-and-red cellophane bags, a whistle, three sweaters, and two pairs of sneakers also were on the floor. The wooden desks with attached chairs were in jagged rows, some turned all the way around and facing each other.
After I finished my yogurt and dumped the container in the wastebasket, I just sat at my desk and waited for the bell to ring.
When it did, the kids charged into the class in jean jackets and sweatshirts. It was April. They ran to their seats.
I stood up in the middle of “Please, please, be quiet,” and suddenly stopped. The place where my chest was sore—it was opening, opening red and enormous like a great peony, and it was radiating throughout my body. I felt the blood flowing in my hands and legs. I turned and looked out the window. I looked at the smoky appearance of the spring cottonwoods near the parking lot. Any day now they would break into leaf. There was a spindly Russian olive near our window. Suddenly it looked beautiful. Then I had one simple vision: I saw myself wandering in autumn fields and I felt that nothing, nothing else was important. This was a profound feeling, a big feeling. It wasn’t a passing, momentary flash. I knew I had to stay true to that one vision.
Understand, I had no idea what was happening. It wasn’t some glorious enlightenment that many of us imagine and wish for. I was frightened. I didn’t want it. I just wanted to be a writer and to earn a living keeping this class in front of me quiet. I didn’t understand what was going on, and I had no clue about those autumn fields. Just then, there was a fist fight in the corner between Henry and Anita, the toughest girl in the class, and the spectators were enthusiastic. I had signed a contract, my first. I hated my job; I wasn’t qualified for it—which, in this case, meant keeping control of everyone—but that didn’t matter. I was going to get through it. I had two months until the end of school and now something was inside me and I had to stop that fight.
When I got home that night I called a friend.
“Gabrielle, my heart opened in front of the class. Nothing makes sense.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied. She was an intellectual. She, too, had read Kant, Descartes, Henri Bergson, Aristotle.
I hung up. None of my friends wanted to hear about it. They all were like the person I’d been before this afternoon in
class: atheists, intellectuals.
At two in the morning, I bolted up in bed, wide awake. I got up and walked into the living room, sat down on the couch and stared at the kitchen clock over the refrigerator in the other room. My mind was totally blank. I just stared. I didn’t go back to sleep until five A.M. I had to wake up for school at seven. I was exhausted the whole next day in class.
This waking up and staring in the middle of the night continued for three weeks. It became clear that I should quit my job and go to the mountains. Simultaneous with this clear feeling was another voice in me: “What! Are you crazy? You’ve signed a contract. If you quit, you won’t get another one. The mountains! You’re a city girl. You don’t know anything about the mountains!”
The kids continued to run around the classroom. I became quite fond of several of them, and I was tired from no sleep and strung out between my heart and my teacher’s contract.
Finally on one Monday in school, without plan or thought, I went next door to Mrs. Martinez and asked her to watch the class. I marched down the just-waxed linoleum corridor lined with tan lockers to the principal’s office. I have no idea what I said to him as I sat across from him at his large brown desk, because while my mouth, connected with my body, spoke one thing, my busy mind was screaming at me, “What are you doing? You’re crazy. You’re finished! You’ll starve in a gutter.” I must have been eloquent, though, because when I was finished, Mr. Peterson, the principal, stood up, gave me a strong handshake, and said, “I understand completely. And if you ever want a job again, just call me.”
I felt such relief. I flew down the hall back to my class. I was free. This was my last week trying to get the kids in their seats. As a matter of fact, when I entered the class again, after thanking Mrs. Martinez for watching them, I thought, “What the hell. Let them do what they want. They do it anyway.” I sat behind my desk the rest of the afternoon, smiling. We all seemed happier and, given freedom, they seemed less unruly.
On Tuesday I took attendance and then lined them up at the door. I didn’t have a plan but I was sure one would emerge. I marched them outside and along the weedy road. Just being outside made us all happy. We walked for a quarter of a mile and I saw the Staff of Life sign in the distance. I remembered it was a food coop on five acres of land, with swings and paths and an herb garden. We headed toward it, and for the whole morning the kids gathered in small groups, played, and were content. The coop people were thrilled. They were getting a chance to educate the youth. They ran out intermittently with samples of organic carrots and roasted corn. Anita even said she could definitely taste the difference between organic and nonorganic carrots and she liked the organic better, said she was going to ask her mom to buy some.
Each day of that week we did something different. I trusted something inside me, instead of what I thought I should do, and the kids responded. Because I was leaving soon, I didn’t feel the restraints of the public school. It was as though that institution was no longer between me and the kids, that massive brick structure had crumbled, a new path had opened, a new way to be together. It wasn’t all obvious to me at the time, but it was the beginning of something new.
On Thursday it rained. The kids were dismayed. We wouldn’t be able to leave the building.
“Nonsense,” I said. “It’s not cold out and it’s not raining hard. Let’s get very still.” I waited for them to become still and they did, unlike a few weeks ago. “When we go out and enter the rain, see if you can walk between the drops.” I paused. “If we do get wet, don’t worry—it’s New Mexico!” In one enormous rush, I felt the whole glory of the state. “We’ll dry quickly.”
I led them to the front door. They were excited and a little nervous. We were breaking a rule: You couldn’t get wet by rain, only by swimming in pools, by sprinklers, showers, and never in school. I was happy, fearless. I was taking that girl in Mr. Clemente’s class out from behind the desk and into the downpour.
I stood by the door. “I will demonstrate. All of you watch and then you can follow.” They stood huddled in the entry way. I stepped out, no raincoat, no umbrella, my palms up and open in supplication to water. I stepped along the sidewalk.
I went up to a bush, picked a twig, turned to face the group and said, “Ahhh, sagebrush smells best in the rain. Come slowly and enter it.”
They stepped away from the building like the patients in the movie King of Hearts, who had been freed from the insane asylum. They stepped out into the rain gingerly, tenderly, and were delighted.
On Friday, I stood in front of the blackboard. “I have something to tell you.” They were all attentive. “Today is the last day of the week and the last day I’ll be here.” There was an awkward, stunned silence. “Look, I know, this has been a tough year for you. Let’s face it, none of you were dolls. You weren’t that well behaved.” Alvaro, Roberto, and Eloy smirked. “But this week was a great week.” They all nodded. “I want you to remember it. It’s important. All of you get in your seats”—they were leaning against bookshelves and sitting on top of desks—“and when you do, I want you to close your eyes and put out your hands.” I walked around and placed a Hershey’s Kiss in each kid’s palm. “Now unwrap it, and all on the same count, when I say yes, put it on your tongue, close your eyes and your mouth, let it melt slowly, and remember this week. Promise to never forget it, no matter what else happens in your life.” I switched off the classroom lights.
I felt sad and happy when I left that day. I had begun to redeem something from a long time ago, all that deadness I had felt as a child.
A few days later someone told me to check out the Lama Foundation, a commune that had spiritual retreats, seventeen miles north of Taos. It was started by Ram Dass as a place to further consciousness. His book Be Here Now, about his experience in India and his recipes for being in the present, was put together there. I had read it years before when I lived in Ann Arbor and was impressed by it, though I didn’t understand it then. The Lama Foundation had an open house every Sunday.
I drove north in my Volkswagen Beetle, made a right at a sawmill and drove down a long, circuitous dirt road that took me up Lama Mountain. There were white and faded pink squares of material hanging from trees along the road—prayer flags, I learned later—and then a wooden sign that said: Park: the rest of the way you go on foot. I parked; I followed the dirt path. About halfway up, a woman six feet tall, barefoot, wearing a long white robe, was coming in the opposite direction.
“What are you doing here?” she asked bluntly.
I looked up. I clasped my hands to my breast. “The Garden of Eden opened up in my heart and I don’t know what to do,” I blurted out, earnestly.
“You must find a practice to water that garden,” she said without missing a beat.
I was so grateful. “You mean you understand?”
“Of course I do,” she said.
After that day I drove back to Albuquerque, gave notice to my landlord, packed my things and moved up to the Lama Foundation. It felt right. I was trusting something that wasn’t logical. I took a leap of faith. I’d never been in a place like Lama before.
Someone gave me a tipi to live in on Lama Mountain and a man named Siddiq, who was an exphysicist from Berkeley, taught me how to meditate—to sit cross-legged, back straight, hands on knees, and to feel my breath go in and out at my nose. I’d never paid much attention to my breath before. I had been breathing since I was born, but now I noticed it. As I sat, my attention wandered all over the place—to a fly on my knee, to a memory of my grandfather’s hat, to a thought of chocolate—but my breath continued, physically there throughout the time I sat, and then, I realized in amazement, throughout my life. And I discovered breath had different qualities all by itself, without my controlling it. Sometimes it would be deep, at other times shallow. It felt like the measure of the line when I wrote poetry: short lines, staccato breath; long lines, I’m breathing way down in my belly. I saw, too, that my breath also determined how much I could write
at one time, it made language physical, it propelled the sentence. Also, breath connected me to my body. Whether my mind wandered or not, my body stayed in the cross-legged position. It was here, whether I was or not.
Each week we prepared for a new teacher to come up to Lama. The second week I was there, Baba Hari Dass visited. He was an Indian sadhu who hadn’t spoken in twenty years. He’d made a vow never to speak again. It used up prana. Prana is breath and essential life energy. Baba Hari Dass was a yogi. He’d lived in the jungle alone for fourteen years, and for those years he ate only two bananas and a cup of milk a day. Also he’d never cut his hair and wore it wound up on the top of his head. He communicated by writing on a blackboard. When I walked into the dome where he sat on the first day of his visit, surrounded by his followers, he looked up at me. He was beautiful, with sharp black eyes like drops of fresh-cut coal. I felt very conspicuous. I wore khaki bermudas, a tee-shirt and short hair. Many of the people at Lama had been to India, wore white robes, had long hair—the men included—a ring in their nose, several in their ears.
Hari Dass wrote on his blackboard, “What do you do?” and then he turned the board so I could read it.
“I teach English,” I said. Even in my awkwardness, I had this one identity. I cared about language, writing, literature, but I felt silly saying it.
He smiled and wrote on his board, “Will you teach me?” Everyone laughed. I felt immediately okay, warm, accepted. I wasn’t weird, odd, out of place. I sat down and joined in the singing. Here was a teacher who spoke to my whole person. I felt good, simply good, in his presence.
The following week, Rabbi Zalman Schacter came to teach. We celebrated a luxurious Sabbath with a big challah we baked that day, lots of food, dancing, prayers, singing.
On that Monday I received a letter from my mother. “Please call us immediately,” she wrote. There were no phones at Lama. I had to drive down the mountain that night into Questa, the nearest town. I found an outdoor pay phone at a food market and called my parents collect.
Long Quiet Highway Page 6