Later that day, she called him and left a message. When he rang back, he suggested that they go to a movie together, that it might take her mind off things and that he would meet her at the cinema at six. She didn’t particularly want to, sitting still in a theatre never appealed to her, but she agreed, still feeling slightly ashamed about the way she had treated him on the night that Caitlin left.
He was late, as he often was, and she walked up and down in front of the box office, counting the number of seconds before the lights changed from green to red. At twenty minutes after six, she gave up on waiting for him. If she was going to see a movie she didn’t want to see in the first place, then she wanted to see all of it. She called him on his mobile, left a message and then turned for home.
But halfway to the bus stop she changed her mind. The anger she had felt on being left waiting had gone and she regretted the haste with which she had left. She almost went back to the cinema, imagining for a moment that she would be able to greet him without a sharp word, that they would kiss, hold hands and walk into the darkened theatre together. If she went back to the flat, she would only dial the number that Caitlin had left, over and over again. And it was fast becoming obvious (even to someone as stubborn as she was) that there was little point to the exercise.
Eventually she walked down the back street that led to Lou’s house. She wanted company. She wanted to sit and have a drink with someone other than herself.
It was Christina who answered the door, the phone pressed to her ear as she beckoned Sharn in. ‘One minute,’ she signalled, holding one finger up, and she tried to finish the call, telling the other person, ‘Yeah, that sounds good, sure, will do.’
There was nowhere to sit. The couch was covered in papers, and a cat and three kittens were curled up in the one chair. Sharn cleared a space on the sofa and waited, although it seemed Lou was not in.
‘Out,’ Christina confirmed, eventually hanging up, ‘but she should be back soon.’ She sat on the floor opposite Sharn and started rolling a joint. ‘Want some?’ she asked, and Sharn was about to say no, that she wouldn’t wait, when she changed her mind. Why not?
‘So, what’s the deal with Caitlin?’ and Christina drew back deeply, eventually letting the sweet-smelling smoke out in a thin stream.
Sharn liked Christina, they had got on well ever since she had tried to help her sober up at Caitlin’s fourteenth birthday. (Christina had spiked her soft drink with wine she had found in the fridge, and had rapidly become more and more drunk, eventually collapsing on the floor in a peal of laughter after attempting to impersonate Britney Spears, and finally vomiting in the kitchen.)
‘I have no idea,’ and Sharn took the joint from Christina, realising as she did so that it had been a long time since she had been stoned. She coughed, and grinned as she coughed again, the smoke rough in the back of her throat.
‘Has she joined some cult?’ Christina smiled on the last word.
Sharn said that she guessed that’s what she’d call it, but she really didn’t know who they were or what they believed in. ‘Or even where they are based.’ And then she leant forward conspiratorially, trying to make light of the situation. ‘I’ve been ringing them constantly, harassing them senselessly, and getting nowhere.’
‘Got the number?’ Christina held up the phone and winked, and for a moment Sharn was about to pass the scrap of paper over to her, to let Christina give them hell and to enjoy the game, but then she changed her mind. Rather than bringing levity, the dope only seemed to bring a strange sadness, damp and tired within each of her bones.
‘What did you think of her?’ she asked, suddenly curious to hear how someone else saw her daughter, to gain some outside definition of who she was.
Christina sat back and crossed her legs. She put the joint down in the ashtray and tied back her long brown hair. When she looked across at Sharn, her gaze was curious. ‘What do you mean – what did I think of her? It’s not like she’s dead.’
Sharn shifted uncomfortably. ‘I know. I just wanted to know what she was like – at school, with friends.’
‘She kept to herself,’ and Christina stared up at the ceiling as she searched for the description she wanted. ‘She was performing a role. That’s what it was like. She did everything she was meant to, but you never really knew what was going on, you never knew what she actually felt about anything.’
Sharn shook her head as Christina passed her the joint.
‘You know,’ and Christina took another long drag, ‘you shouldn’t worry about her. She’s not the type of person to do something stupid. She’s not the type to be pushed into something that she felt wasn’t right. You should trust her.’
‘You reckon?’ Sharn knew that her grin was as feeble as it felt.
‘Absolutely.’ Christina smiled. ‘Besides, what choice do you have?’
Sharn sighed. Her eyes were heavy and her mind felt clouded, dense and slow. She wished she had waited for Liam. She wished she were sitting in the film with him now. As always, when she was away from him, she missed him. So much so that it hurt. But when she was with him, it was never how she had hoped it would be. She looked down at the ground. More than anything, she wanted someone to look after her. But instead, she had to find the energy to get up and get home.
‘So that’s what you’d do?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you were me.’
Christina looked at her. ‘I guess so,’ she said.
Sharn took a cigarette from the open packet on the table.
‘But then, I’m not you, am I?’ Christina added.
That she wasn’t, Sharn thought to herself. And thank Christ for that. Because who in their right mind would want to be the tense, fucked-up mess she had become? And she laughed, a stoned, lazy laugh, as she thought about the person she had been at Christina’s age, alone in that single-roomed shack with a baby.
When she glanced up she saw that Christina was still looking at her, her gaze one of confusion and, undeniably, pity.
‘You all right?’ she asked, and Sharn just reached for her bag.
‘I have to go,’ she said. She leant across to take Christina’s hand. ‘Thanks.’
And she turned to the door, wanting only to be home.
IN THE GARDEN THERE ARE FRANGIPANNIS, heady sweet in the sticky heat, great hibiscus that yawn, red, pink and golden under the heavy clouds, and bougainvillea that sprawls lurid around the verandah. The traveller palms catch the slight breeze that comes before the afternoon rain, the great leaves rustling like stiff sheets of card, and Caitlin, who is now Nirav, sits, still, on the lawn beneath them, each limb tired and aching.
She is blessed, they tell her now that it is obvious, this weight that she is carrying. She is blessed, and she repeats their words to herself until she believes them.
In the evenings, she sweats, lying curled up on her side, unable to sleep. Kalyani sponges down her forehead with cool water, and kisses each eyelid. Santosh asks after her health, his voice a hushed whisper as he passes her, so soft that he might not have spoken. He, too, questions her with each glance.
Or perhaps she just imagines that their concern is more than simple care for another. Perhaps she is still too tied to a world that has passed.
Here, she does as all the others do. There is no question of doing otherwise. The fear she felt when it first became obvious has to be gone. Fear is anxiety about the future that comes from being trapped in the past. There is no place for it here. This is what she tells herself, over and over again. She does not eat when the others do not eat. She meditates when they meditate. She follows instructions, walking down to the river for water for washing, gathering petals for garlands, lying prostrate in obedience, and each time she feels the discomfort in her body, she does not question the correctness of her course. She cannot. Her role is only to obey, to experience the sublime beauty of obedience in every given moment.
She is blessed, they tell her, because this is the
most extraordinarily exacting task of all. To immerse herself in now when the future kicks against her skin, the imprint of a heel clear against her flesh; this is the task that she has been given, this is her path to enlightenment, and she must hold it and bless it in the palms of her hands.
A butterfly dips into an open blossom, sapphire blue wings flitting open and shut, the colour brilliant against the cream of the petals. An ant crawls across her foot, tickling her bare skin, and overhead a bird calls, sharp, piercing the stillness.
And here under the palms, she is as she is. Aware only of the changing heat, the slow build-up that will finally burst open. Fat, hot drops of rain that become a torrential shower, the great bruised sky emptying, the earth finally cooling beneath her feet as she sits, still and heavy, in the perfection of the present.
WHEN LIAM SUGGESTED that Sharn’s response to Caitlin’s decision could partly be due to the bitterness she still felt about Sassafrass, she denied it. It was the night of Caitlin’s visit, a week after she had left home, and he had come back from work to find Sharn still sitting on the couch with her book.
‘Caitlin came.’
He listened without a word.
‘When I was talking about regrets, I wasn’t talking about having her,’ and Sharn stared at him. ‘I was talking about not finishing school, about staying so long in that place.’
And although he did not respond, his disbelief was evident.
‘It’s true,’ she said.
He just shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe if you started by letting Sassafrass go, you could move on to letting her go.’ He uttered the words softly, but she heard them nonetheless.
‘They don’t have anything to do with each other,’ and she turned and left him, alone in the room.
When Lou made the same suggestion some months later, her response was not so certain.
‘They’re just so full of shit,’ she said, ‘all of them,’ and she knew how sweeping her statement was, but she didn’t care. ‘I mean, look at Simeon. He fucked me, and anyone else who was stupid enough to let him. Four days after I had Caitlin, I had to get straight back to work. I had to clean out the chicken coop if I wanted eggs for dinner. All he wanted was money, sex and cheap labour. I couldn’t give him the first one, but he certainly got the other two out of me.’ She attempted to smile, but she feared her expression was more like a grimace than anything else.
She had been trying, as everyone had advised her, to just let it go, so much so that when Lou first told her that Christina knew of someone who had followed Satya Deva, she didn’t seize the telephone immediately to find out how she could meet her. She asked Lou if she could get her number, and when Lou forgot, she rang Christina herself.
Her name was Freya, Christina said. Christina knew her younger sister, and she gave Sharn Freya’s contact details.
What did she say? Sharn wanted to ask, but she forced herself not to. She wanted to be calm, to be measured in her response.
‘Pretty interesting,’ Christina said, ‘what she told me, that is.’
And Sharn gave up any pretence of detachment. ‘What?’ she demanded, ‘what did she tell you?’
‘They just sounded freaky. Total obedience to the lord and master.’
Sharn arranged to meet Freya two evenings later. Her flat was above a panel-beating shop in a suburb close to the beach.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said when she opened the door, and she pointed to a stick of burning incense in the hallway. ‘Hate the shit, but it’s the only thing that gets rid of the spray-painting fumes,’ and she pointed below to the garage.
The odour was cloying in its sweetness, overpowering, but Sharn told her that it was fine, barely noticeable in fact.
Freya just laughed. ‘Obviously something wrong with your sense of smell, then.’
Her boy was getting ready for bed, prevaricating about brushing his teeth. When he eventually came out of the bathroom, he asked Sharn if she could read to him.
‘He always does that,’ Freya said, ‘to anyone who comes over,’ and Sharn was relieved as Freya led him into the bedroom and told him that she would read the stories tonight.
‘You know he’s the son of God?’ Freya said when she came back out. She pointed to a cask of wine and Sharn nodded.
‘You do?’ Freya laughed again, husky and fierce.
For a moment Sharn wondered whether she was a little mad, and she attempted to explain that she had been saying yes to the wine, and not in fact confirming that she knew Freya’s son was some divine being.
Freya just grinned. ‘I was fucked by the great Satya Deva. Most of us were. And that’s what happened.’ She pointed to the bedroom. ‘Not that I’m not glad to have him,’ and she sat down opposite Sharn, stretching her legs out on the coffee table, ‘but man, oh man, when I think about what a gullible fool I was …’
She had been twenty. ‘I’d just broken up with the love of my life, and I was devastated.’ She lit a cigarette and pushed the pack over towards Sharn. And I met some devotee in the supermarket, who somehow sucked me in.’ It was what they did, she said, used the young, good-looking ones either to recruit or to serve.
‘I’m sure your daughter – what’s her name?’
‘Caitlin.’
‘Yeah, Caitlin, was brought in by one of them. Some handsome young bloke who made her feel that he alone understood her.’ She drank the last of the wine in her glass and poured herself another, pushing the cask across the table towards Sharn.
Sharn shook her head. She couldn’t help noticing how rapidly Freya seemed to be consuming her alcohol, and she wondered how drunk she was.
The ash from Freya’s cigarette crumbled onto the carpet and she rubbed it in with her foot, smiling as she did so. ‘And then there’s the faceless, grey ones. The middle-aged, the ugly.’ She sneered. ‘They do the work. Run the shonky sales operations, the rip-off spiritual awakening camps, cook and clean, all the boring drudgery – that’s theirs. Equality is not an outstanding feature of Satya Deva’s dominion.’
She had lived in one of the city houses for about eight months before she was asked to join the inner circle on some land they owned up north.
‘It was what everyone wanted,’ and Freya rubbed at a clump of mascara that had dried on her lashes, a dark circle forming around her eye. ‘The calling from the master. He had some guy who would come down and check out the new recruits and pick the best looking ones. No one told us where the land was, no one knew unless they went there; it was just painted as this nirvana, one step down from heaven, and off you went.’
She smiled to herself, shaking her head as she did so. ‘Everyone had to wear white in the presence of the lord. It was all part of his nothing-is-everything, servitude-is-freedom rant and rave.’
It was getting darker now and the tip of her cigarette glowed as she drew back deeply. She leant across and switched on a small lamp next to the television, bathing the room in a dirty yellow light.
‘It was mad. The whole lot of it. And I wonder at myself, at my own stupidity.’ Her voice cracked a little. ‘I was a fucking lunatic.’
She had turned slightly to the side and Sharn shifted uncomfortably in her own seat. She was about to tell her that it was okay, she didn’t have to say any more if she didn’t want to, when Freya spoke again. Her thin face was pale, and the smudge of mascara gave her a ghoulish look in the dim light.
‘I got so sick. I barely ate. There were weeks when we were told that we could live off air alone.’ This time her smile was weaker, the bravado momentarily gone. ‘It’s a wonder he survived,’ and she nodded in the direction of her son’s room.
From down below, Sharn could hear the sound of a car engine revving. The roar built, silencing them, until the tyres eventually skidded on the road, the squeal loud as it disappeared up the street.
‘The owner’s son,’ Freya explained, and she rolled her eyes. ‘Complete petrolhead.’ She looked at Sharn as though she had lost track of what it was they were discussing,
as though it had all slipped through her fingers, spilling into a pool on the floor.
‘I think Caitlin is still in the city,’ Sharn said. ‘But I don’t know. I’ve been ringing the house over and over again and no one will tell me.’
Freya just smiled. She continued talking as though Sharn had never spoken.
‘Sometimes we would meditate for days. Or walk through the cane fields naked for hours on end. We had to do whatever he told us, and there was no rhyme or reason behind any of it. Abstinence. Denial of all personal desires and needs. The path to freedom. That’s what we were told, and I swallowed it. Every bit of it. The more you obeyed, the greater you were. That was the deal,’ and she stubbed out her cigarette, the end sizzling in a small pool of wine she had spilt in the ashtray.
‘What made you finally leave?’
Sharn pulled back as Freya undid the top buttons of her shirt, her mouth drawn tight in a sharp, angry line. As she opened it, she revealed a wound that started at her collarbone and spread down to her small breasts, the flesh pink and puckered, angry in its failed attempt to heal.
‘I burnt myself,’ she said. ‘By accident,’ she added, seeing the momentary look of alarm that had crossed Sharn’s face.
Sharn winced.
‘I was no longer attractive. I was no longer required. I mean, look at me.’
‘Did you want to leave?’
Freya did not do up her shirt. She just sat there, the wound on display as she looked Sharn directly in the eyes. ‘No, I didn’t. I was horrified. They told me I was no longer a valid spiritual member of the community – whatever that means – and I fell apart.
‘I was driven back to one of the city houses and given a job. But I felt so deeply ashamed of the fact that I had somehow failed, I could no longer function. I lost the plot. Or maybe I actually regained it, I don’t know. Nothing made sense anymore. The words they used, the readings, the lessons, it all seemed to be completely scrambled, incomprehensible. I began to ask questions, all the time, and I wasn’t trying to be difficult, I just didn’t understand anymore.’ Her face was hard as she spoke and under the yellow of the lamplight she looked almost maniacal.
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