The Lightness

by Emily Temple

  “It doesn’t matter,” Nisha said, moving slightly in front of her friend. “They’re all the same. But you’re not really one of them, are you?”

  At that, I turned on my heel and walked swiftly away. Jealous! Unkept! Burned by tea! Wrong about Serena! And wrong about me. So, so wrong.

  Funny how come to harm can mean itself and also its own exact opposite. I’ve been harmed. I’ve come to harm you.

  Speaking of harm: for a while after my father disappeared, I burned photos of him in the bathtub, watching the edges of his face curl and scroll, leaving a black stain on the porcelain that afterward I’d sit on, imagining that his destruction could power me like a battery. I didn’t tell my mother. I didn’t want to encourage her. She was so angry already. Later, I was sorry not to have those pictures, but isn’t that always the way?

  But of course my mother wasn’t always angry, even after her transformation. That’s just a story I tell. I remember one afternoon when she burst into the house from the garage. “Let’s go on a walk,” she said.

  I pulled away from her. The night before, she had held me up by my hair, yelled into my face. “I’m eating,” I said.

  She reached out and took the sandwich from my hand, ate half of it herself in two bites, then handed it back to me. “Hurry up,” she said.

  “God,” I said. But it was funny, and I softened toward her and slipped on my coat. It was early spring by then, March or April, wet snow in the seams of the sidewalks.

  We walked through the neighborhood, looking into people’s windows.

  “I used to do this all the time when I was your age,” she said.

  “Spy on people?”

  “Imagine what my life might be like if I were someone else. Look in there,” she said, grabbing my arm and pointing into the picture window of a white Craftsman. “Boring home, boring soul. Never trust anyone with cottage furniture. Or a sitting room.”

  My mother had strong but mutable opinions about furniture. At least once a week, I would come home from school to find a completely different house than the one I’d left. Chairs, artwork, rugs would appear and disappear, or emerge in a different room, in a different form, painted or dyed or cut into new shapes. My mother liked to buy things, especially things we didn’t need, especially when there was no money for it. Her own mother had never wasted a cent in America, had kept cans of Sprite in the cabinet long after their expiration dates, so when you opened them, she told me once, they had nothing but stale, flat water inside, all the sugar and flavor sunk to the bottom, but that was no excuse; if you opened it, you drank it—and so my mother bought things.

  “What would you do if you lived there?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The same things I do now, probably.”

  “I’d tear down that wall,” she said, moving closer. We were already on their lawn, and the frosted grass complained beneath our boots. “Get an oak dining table. They have nice moldings but terrible taste. Their house could be beautiful, if only they knew it was ugly.”

  “Mom,” I hissed. I imagined cops, dogs. The neighbors already hated her. Loud parties, irresponsible lawn management, a shy shadow of an accent, and worst of all, a husband no one had seen for months, maybe longer, and well, you know what that says about a woman.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “I want to imagine myself in there.”

  “Why?” I said. “You don’t even like the house.” She was standing right in front of the window now—she could have pressed her nose against it—while I waited, shivering, a few yards back, looking over my shoulder. I imagined her hair growing enormous and sentient, breaking in through the windows and invading every part of this ugly house, filling all the rooms like thick black water before spreading, searching, stuffing itself into every house in the neighborhood, smothering all the occupants and pushing their desiccated bodies out onto their lawns. I imagined my mother’s calm face in the middle of the black mass, her sigh of relief as she filled up every space around her, as she reached farther, farther, farther.

  She stepped away from the window. “It’s only a game,” she said. “My mother used to play it with me. We would walk around our neighborhood together, and dream about the lives we might have someday. Every house was my dollhouse. I never had a real one, like you did. I never had a single doll, and you always scream when I try to braid your hair.”

  I pointed to a green Victorian at the end of the block.

  “Oh,” she said. “You’re my daughter after all.”

  Yes, sometimes she was like this: conspiratorial, kind, desirous of my love. Other times, she would storm into my room, push me, slap me, grab an arm in her hot fist, curse me, throw me to the floor. But after a while, I began to be able to predict her moods. They seemed to have something to do with the men who continued to come in and out of our house at night, with the parties she threw nearly every week, with the Fatties, who kept appearing, each one bigger, meaner, and closer to the house than the last. (Poor old Beth was looking slim and benign now. My mother had achieved grand new heights of grotesquerie.) I found I could map her anger, skirt to the edges when necessary. I could often escape this way. Yes, even like this, even though she had become this monstrous, unbridled version of herself, I could plot her. She made sense to me. I was her daughter, after all. That’s why I had to leave.

  When Tenzin finally made the meal we’d been waiting for—her “famous” vegetarian chili—I followed Laurel to the kitchen at the beginning of rota. I waited in the doorway as she ducked in to get a bowl, but just as she was handing it over, Tenzin noticed us. “Laurel,” she said. “What are you doing?” She was standing before a sideboard covered with tiny green pots, mixing spices to see which combinations she liked best, and in which proportions.

  I stepped forward. “I was wondering,” I said, “if I could bring Luke a bowl of chili.”

  “Ha!” she shouted. “Does someone have a little crush on Luke?”

  “No!” I looked around. The other girls who had their rota in the kitchen were not even pretending not to listen. Svetlana’s look of outrage was somewhat mediated by the enormous rubber gloves she had on. “I do rota in the garden, and I know he missed his lunch today,” I said. This was actually true, or at least it had a good chance of being true. Luke often missed lunch, preferring to meditate inside at the hottest parts of the day. We had missed lunch too, of course, preferring to starve ourselves, but Tenzin didn’t know that.

  “All the little girls love Luke,” Tenzin said. She dipped her finger in one of the bowls, dabbed it into another, and then put it in her mouth.

  “I’m just trying to practice, you know, loving-kindness,” I said. This was a phrase Shastri Dominique had been saying a lot lately in our meditation sessions.

  Tenzin snorted. “Well, good for you.” She turned to let a few of her sous-chefs bustle past, and I was hit sideways with the scent of rosemary. “I don’t know what you’re up to,” she said, “but I didn’t see Luke at lunch, so you’re in luck. Bring him a bowl. But don’t make me regret it, or this one will be scrubbing my ovens for the rest of the summer.” Laurel filled a glass bowl with chili, fitted a plastic lid on top, and handed it over, her face carefully blank. I left without waiting for any more discussion.

  When I was out of sight of the main building, I stopped and sat down behind a tree. I put the bowl between my legs and opened the vial above it. The blood was thick; I had to tap the sides to get it out. Even then, the glass was still red by the end. I thought about using my finger to scrape with—the vial was wide enough that I might have gotten it to fit—but instead I screwed the cap back on and kept the dregs for myself. Just in case.

  The blood sat, viscous and dark, on top of the chili. I waited for it to sink in, but it wouldn’t, and I hadn’t remembered to bring a spoon, so I stirred with the first two fingers on my right hand. I winced when I plunged them in; the chili was still hot. I had to knead a little bit to integrate the blood. When I pulled out my fingers, they were st
ained pink. I thought of Jamie, whose right index finger was always burned to a raw-looking red from nail to joint. But that was another thing entirely. That was the opposite of what I was trying to do now.

  I looked down at the chili, suddenly hungrier than I had ever been. So what if I had already mixed it with Serena’s blood? No one would see. And in fact—

  No. I slammed the lid back on.

  Luke was cleaning his tools when I arrived. He looked up. “I wondered if you were coming,” he said.

  I held up the bowl. “Tenzin wanted you to have this,” I said.

  “Ah, a lovely woman.” He wiped his hands and took the bowl from me.

  “I forgot a spoon,” I said, hiding my hand behind my back. But he only winked and retrieved one from the shed. Then he sat down on the bench, bowl cradled in his lap. He stirred, but didn’t take a bite. I couldn’t take my eyes off the chili. I thought of Serena’s blood cooking in the hot mess, steaming up into Luke’s eyes.

  “I’m worried about you,” he said.

  “It’s a really good batch today,” I said, pointing at the bowl.

  “All right,” he said. “I get it.”

  Then he began to eat.

  He ate quickly, greedily. When the spoon hit glass, he licked the bowl. I could see his wet, pink, sea-creaturey tongue flattening itself again and again against the clear bottom, lapping up the stray bits of Serena. Lap lap lap lap lap lap.

  I wondered if he would change immediately, if it would be something I could see. Would he sprout wings, or take off his clothes, or grow enormous or small, or declare his love for Serena, or become Serena, or turn the color of the hibiscus flower, which is also the color of blood?

  “Thank you for this,” he said. “You’re too good to me.” I felt the silver string again, pulling at me. I was overheating. There were no clouds in the sky. It was unbearable. I would fit into his lap so easily. I didn’t move. He was full of Serena’s blood. What would happen if I kissed him now?

  I stepped forward, and he smiled. I came closer, and he reached a hand toward me. I moved slightly to the side, plucked the bowl from his lap, and turned away from him. “I’ll go return this,” I said, and then I walked out of the garden without saying anything else, and whatever Luke felt about that, I couldn’t say, because I didn’t look back to see his face.

  How can I explain? I felt charged with power, run through with it, my bones turned to hot iron. I had forced something upon the world. I had changed something. Yes, I had fed Serena’s blood to Luke, but it was more than that. I had wanted something, with my whole body, and then I had refused it. Snap the flower arrows of desire and then, unseen, escape the king of death. The king of death had nothing on me. I was not a peach!

  I walked back to the dormitory, the bowl under my arm. The heat was suffocating that day, but inside it was cool and empty, everyone else still at rota. I lay on my bed. I held the bowl over my face. I could still smell the chili, and maybe even the blood, a faint metallic brightness. I moved the bowl to the pillow beside my head. I turned onto my stomach and let the bowl kiss my forehead. I reached down and pressed my hand between my legs, and felt an electric current run through my body, all my muscles turning toward that spot. I could see it so clearly: the shape their bodies would make together, now or soon, skin on skin, their long hair mixing. Serena had said she wouldn’t really do anything, that it was all a trick, but what if she did? I would, if I were her. I would let him touch me. I would let him lift me into the air. I could see how her chin might fit into his neck, how his rough fingers might encircle her corded wrists. The muscles of his arms, her smooth shoulder, the slope of her small breast. Exposed, exposed, everything shown and touched and used, and I made it happen. I pressed harder. I thought of him, but I also thought of her. Right at the end, I thought of myself, leaving him there on the bench, wanting more of me. Yes, yes, I thought, yes: this feeling would build, and then I would rise.

  11

  The last time I saw my father, he took me to the movies. It was the thing we did together most often after he and my mother separated: sitting in silence in the dark. I’m not complaining. I wish we had done it more. I’ve forgotten what we saw that day, though I remember not liking it very much. I remember not buying into the tragedy, whatever it was meant to be.

  On the way back, I began talking about nothing, complaining: there’d been a small slight at school, a fight with my mother. “Can’t I live with you?” I asked him for the thousandth time.

  “Your mother wouldn’t like that,” he said.

  “I want to be a Buddhist,” I said.

  “I’m going to tell you a story,” he said.

  The story goes like this: there was once a young monk who traveled from monastery to monastery, hoping for enlightenment. Geshé Tenpa, a great old teacher, met him and said, “It is nice to tour holy places, but it is much better to practice the sublime Dharma.”

  The young monk took the master’s words to heart, and began to study the sutras night and day, putting their teachings into action whenever he could. One day Geshé Tenpa came upon him as he was bent over a page, and said, “It is worthwhile to study scriptures and accomplish virtuous acts, but far better to practice the noble Dharma.”

  So the monk began to focus all of his attention on meditation. He meditated day in and day out. Inevitably, soon Geshé Tenpa found him, sitting on a cushion, concentrating with all his might. “Meditation is good,” the old teacher said, “but genuine Dharma practice would be even better.”

  The monk, as you might imagine, was very confused. He had tried everything. “Sir!” he cried. “I wish above all else to practice the Dharma. What should I do?”

  “Simply give up all clinging to this life,” Geshé Tenpa told him, before continuing on his way.

  I made sure to hide the bowl under my bed before everyone else filtered in from rota. It was too hot to go outside for free hours that day. Even sunbathing would have been too laborious in heat like that. I lay on top of the sheets in my bunk with my face in my book: The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila, her autobiography. It was an old, attractive hardcover with green edges that I’d borrowed from Serena a few nights before. I’d pulled it from her shelf on a whim, for something to do with my hands, but Serena nodded gravely when she saw what I’d chosen. “She knew everything,” she said.

  When Laurel disappeared to take a shower, I climbed up on Janet’s bunk. She had taught me to play gin rummy in addition to poker. She usually won, of course, but I didn’t mind. Not least because when she didn’t win, we’d have to play three more times, until she was satisfied that her loss had been a fluke. After what Laurel had said about her father, her brothers, I had tried to lose a couple of times on purpose, but Janet could always tell what I was doing. She would refuse to play until I was willing to do my best.

  “Cards?” I said now.

  She pulled out the deck. It was decorated with vintage photos of boxers: Floyd Mayweather Jr. was the king of spades, Muhammad Ali the ace of diamonds. Laila Ali, the only woman in the deck, was assigned the lowly two of clubs. Sometimes Janet would take the cards out to the lawn and turn them over, one by one, using the value to dictate how many push-ups she’d do before she rested for a few seconds. Kings were high at twelve, she said, but she always did thirteen for Laila. She could get through the whole deck that way.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  I looked around as she dealt. Two bed-tops away, Nisha was trying valiantly to plait Harriet’s messy hair. I thought they kept sneaking glances at us, but I wasn’t sure.

  “He ate it,” I whispered.

  Janet grimaced. “Draw or pass?”

  “Do you think it’ll work?” I asked.

  She tapped the cards.

  “Pass,” I said.

  Somewhere in the beds below, Margaret and Evie were exchanging dirty pick-up lines. If your left leg is Christmas and your right leg is New Year’s, can I visit between the holidays? Are you a hard worker? Because I’ve
got an opening you can fill. Have you ever kissed a rabbit between the ears? Would you like to? Would you like to? Would you like to?

  “It doesn’t matter,” Janet said. “Serena is used to getting what she wants. If this doesn’t work, I’m sure she’ll find another way.”

  The bitterness in her voice surprised me. “Everyone wants what they want,” I said.

  “Some more than others,” Janet said.

  On the other side of the room, I could see Paola and Jamie sitting close together on Paola’s low bunk. Paola had her fingers threaded through Jamie’s fragile toes. Samantha was staring at them, her face drawn. I had no idea what was going on between them. They slept so close to me and still I hadn’t noticed whatever saga of love or friendship or betrayal was playing out between their beds. It struck me how isolated I was, even in this mass of girls, how my loneliness hadn’t decreased so much as widened its scope ever so slightly.

  “I thought you wanted this too,” I said.

  “I do,” Janet said. “It’s just—look, I sacrifice a lot to come here. My aunt pays for it, but I lose all the wages that I could have made over the summer. It’s a lot of money for me. And Laurel waits all year to come. She doesn’t really have anyone at home, you know.”

  “Come on,” I said. “I’ve seen the pictures. She’s got a million friends.”

  “Most of those pictures are at least two years old,” she said. “All those kids she goes to school with—they’re not really her friends. Not anymore. She made a mistake, a couple years ago. They don’t say anything outright, because her father’s important, and their mothers make sure they don’t burn bridges. But they all hate her, and she knows it. I don’t know how she can sleep like that, with all their faces around. Or why she wants to.”