Codi, however, appeared immune to his cheeky self-assurance. “Impossible,” she said under her breath.
“If you knew you were loved, regardless,” I pressed on, “and no one would hurt your most tender self, wouldn’t you take off the armor and feel free?” Who the hell was I to preach about taking off one’s armor? Me, who had built impenetrable barriers against love in the name of freedom. Me, who considered love synonymous with sacrifice and guilt? There are different kinds of freedom, I reminded myself, freedom from and freedom to. I wanted freedom from the restrictions preventing me from being free to follow my own heart. Sometimes it was just hard to tell the difference.
As with my birth mother, who’d given her life for a man who claimed to love her while being married to someone else. Had she been free? And Maya, who’d died because the man she loved insisted on removing the birthmark on her face. Had she been free? The answer to both, I realized, was yes. Freedom is choice, and their choices, not their lack of freedom, had led to their deaths.
“I’d feel a lot lighter if I took off my armor,” Jason said. “And naked.”
Codi groaned. “You’re such a goon.”
“I-I’d feel free to discover more” —Tessa’s words revealed themselves slowly— “knowing I c-could make mistakes and…and you’d still like me.”
I walked to the window and tapped my fingers on the glass, disturbed by Tessa’s continued stuttering. “Okay, let’s talk about some boundaries we’ve created to keep ourselves separate from one another.”
“I like my boundaries,” Codi said, cinching the belt of the trench coat she’d claimed as her own. A gothic vintage version with a hood would have been more her style, but apparently mine sufficed in a pinch. “They tell people to keep out.”
“You mean, hands off,” Jason said.
Codi jabbed her index finger at him. “My boundaries say who I am.”
Jason laughed. “Gamma Girl.”
“Hardly, but at least I’m no follower.”
“As long as your personal boundaries don’t alienate you.” I thought of my relationship with Morgan. Was I alienating myself from the man I loved? “All things in moderation.”
“Are you t-talking about compromise?” Tessa asked.
I nodded and headed back to the front of the room. “Like choosing the between.”
“You mean sitting on the fence?” This from Luke. His hair stood on end, a result of combing his hands through the dense red mass at least five times during our conversation thus far.
“No, I don’t mean choosing inaction, only knowing when to let down your guard.”
“At ease, Igor,” Jason said.
“Then again, you also need to know when to snap to attention and protect yourself. If you’re in a secure environment, as I hope you are here, then you’re free to be your true self and get lost in the learning.” When no one commented, I went on. “How do you talk to babies, for instance?”
Tessa laughed. “I m-make faces at them.”
“How do the babies know you aren’t going to hurt them?”
“I talk softly and…and don’t make sudden noises, and s-sometimes I tickle them on the cheek and…and keep at it…u-until they smile and laugh.”
“So, you repeat your behavior because it works.”
“Yeah.” Deprived of her sidekick, Tessa had taken Angelina’s seat at the head of the table on the west side of the U near where I stood. She smelled of lavender.
“Until you find a common language,” I said.
“I guess.”
“On the other hand, when someone you don’t trust walks into the room—”
“Like Mr. Lacoste,” Codi said.
Ethan became suddenly alert. “What’s wrong with Mr. Lacoste?”
“His diet,” Luke said. “He needs to cut out acid-forming foods and work in more alkaline to balance his pH.”
“We set boundaries,” I said.
Codi rose from her seat and leaned against the table in front of her. “Like you should do, Ms. Veil. Don’t trust that man.”
“Why?” Ethan wanted to know.
“He needs to add grapefruit and lemons to his diet,” Luke said, “or he’ll start to decompose like a corpse.”
“With that attitude, things will only get worse,” I cautioned, ignoring Luke, who was apparently clearing his brain of mental plaque. “If I’m feeling negative toward someone, my language, my gestures, and my facial expressions will be divisive right from the start.”
“The unspoken will speak for you.” Luke was back to finger combing his hair, which now reminded me of a California poppy field.
“Exactly, and the person will sense it.”
“Maybe that’s why Maya told us to treat Mr. Lacoste gently,” Jason said.
“You want us to…to look p-past people’s outward behavior?” Tessa asked.
I thought of Cliff, my ex-fiancé, and Charles Lacoste and Dr. Matt. “Or consider their actions as an expression of, or a call for, love.”
“Please tell me you’re not going where I think you’re going.” Codi pressed her fingers to the table to keep them from trembling. “Please, please, please, don’t tell me you want us to look past the behaviors of people who hurt us, because I can’t. I’ve tried and I can’t. They just keep at it. It never stops.” She dropped back into her seat and burst into tears. “Dammit. Now look what you made me do.”
“You let down your mask,” I said gently.
Jason leapt to his feet and draped his arms over her shoulders, a gesture so protective it brought tears to my eyes. “No. She just stripped herself naked.”
I didn’t put my thoughts into words because I didn’t want to destroy the moment, but he’d just told her he loved her in the language of oneness. “Case closed,” I whispered.
***
On Monday, March 4, the other shoe finally dropped. Knowing Dr. Matt and some staff members weren’t pleased with me, I’d been avoiding the main office and central quad, which meant arriving at odd hours to check in and pick up my mail and then rushing to my room to put my head in the sand. But I couldn’t hide forever.
After my class had ended for the day, Dr. Matt stopped by for a visit. He sat in one of the student’s bum-numbing, bucket-shaped chairs and grimaced, as though wondering how anyone could tolerate the discomfort of sitting on such an instrument of torture all day. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.” His designer suit appeared even more extravagant and out of place in this remodeled room with its hand-me-down furniture.
I hadn’t realized until then that the room’s furnishings consisted of rejects from the rest of the school. It hadn’t seemed important before to think about how hastily all of this had been organized and put together. My last days here at West Coast would likely be the same, hastily organized and put together.
“Good,” I said. “Because I’d like to know why I’ve lost your support. Why, for instance, did you refuse my request for a field trip, only to change your mind when Ron Ardis entered the picture, and why haven’t you told me about Angelina’s cancer?”
He blinked then tugged at his ear, a gesture as familiar now as Codi’s eye rolls.
“What have I done to account for this?”
It was only a matter of time before he’d rise from his chair and walk to the window, a tactic the men around here seemed to use rather than look me in the eye.
“You gave me a job to do, and I’m doing it,” I continued, since Dr. Matt seemed at a temporary loss for words. “All of my students, including your nephew, are responding positively, and I’ve heard nothing but praise from their parents. Sure, Charles Lacoste is unhappy with me” —and Angelina’s mom and dad— “but we both expected that from the start.”
“I have it from a reliable source that you have issues that may disqualify you from teaching our youth,” he said calmly.
You’d think we were discussing a migraine or toothache. “Oh, please. Who would say such a
thing about me?” Besides Charles Lacoste.
“My source says you talk to dead people.”
Was this the same man who’d hired me two months ago? “So?”
“You, you…” Dr. Matt stopped, started again. “You don’t deny it?”
“What’s to deny? Some of the Indigos you’re so intent on helping can see and hear the dead. One moves objects through telekinesis, another can heal, another claims to see into the future. Do you need a demonstration to refresh your memory, or are you suddenly afraid of what you don’t understand?”
“My source also says you’re pushing cult-like behavior,” Dr. Matt continued as though more impressed with my opponent’s argument than mine, a reminder that pro se defendants typically lose.
I laughed. “The closest we’ve come to cult-like behavior is having a common goal. A goal you not only agreed to but instigated.”
“Paganism then,” Dr. Matt said.
I thought of how my adoptive mother had called me a pagan squaw when I told her I wanted to discover more about my Native American ancestry. And this from someone who loved me. My self-image should have been in shambles. Instead, I’d felt alive, expanded. By becoming less, I’d become more. Which was how I was beginning to feel now. “I admit to incorporating spiritual practices that may seem taboo from a Christian perspective, especially regarding Mother Earth. Call my ideas postmodern, if you will, like my teaching philosophy, which you endorsed enough to hire me. I also plan to introduce yoga, meditation, and visualization to help these kids use their powers constructively.”
After a slow shake of his head, Dr. Matt continued, “I’d hoped you would encourage them to rely on their mental powers, not pagan activities.”
Okay, Dr. Matt, you’re not even making sense now. What were meditation and visualization if not mental powers? Maybe if I used terms he would recognize from our previous conversations? “How about considering what I’m teaching as casting the oldest of thoughts into the mold of our times?”
He scowled at me. “Parents and faculty have expressed concerns about you.”
My face grew hot. “About me or the class?”
“The way you’re handling the class.”
There was something Dr. Matt wasn’t telling me. The excuses he was using for withholding his support were unconvincing. I’d been living up to my end of the bargain, while he was reneging on his. There had to be a reason important enough for him to go back on his word, but I was running out of time and the motivation to discover what it was. “Does the fact that you approached me and promised your full support enter the equation and that you gave me full rein and offered no guidance or lesson plans?”
“I admit I was a bit hasty.”
“No, Dr. Matt. You weren’t hasty. You showed wisdom and foresight and should start doing so again. These kids need someone with my abilities, and we don’t have much time.”
He stared at me, silent.
I remembered what I’d told the kids about judgment, how it sets parameters and locks us in. My freedom depended on my decision to forgive and to love. Only through forgiveness and love could I cut the chains that bound me. I wasn’t about to spend the rest of my life a model prisoner, waiting for a release that would never come. My only escape was my own permission to fail.
“Dr. Matt, I liked you from the start. I respected you for the love and concern you have for your nephew, and I believed, and still do, that you meant what you said about helping him and kids like him. You said Shawn’s opinion was enough for you and that I bore the truths he needed to hear. You also said I brought soul into the classroom. Remember that before throwing me under the bus.”
With that I got up and walked out the door.
If I didn’t hear back from him that I’d been fired, I would continue to follow the path I was on. With or without his permission.
Chapter Thirty-two
“WHY ON EARTH…” I began the following afternoon.
The words caught in my throat. The previous day’s conversation with Dr. Matt had been an in-the-face lesson about the power of choice. I could either play the victim and pass the blame or use this as an opportunity to fulfill Dr. Matt’s original expectation of me: “Imagine a class of seven students concentrating on the potential energy levels they can attain and then, within the safety of a group, learning how to control and master this energy without repressing or fearing it.”
Paganism, my foot; it was time to bring a little soul into the classroom.
“Why on earth,” I repeated, “don’t we, the luckiest, richest people in the world, feel free to be who we truly are? I don’t get it. Why are we so afraid of failure?”
I might as well have been talking to an empty classroom with six mannequins propped in front of me, mannequins with fiberglass bodies and vacant stares. The wind sent twigs and leaves slapping against the windows. All eyes were turned in that direction, all but Ethan’s and mine. Fortunately, I’d lit the votive candles before class. Their flickering light and honey scent helped dispel the depressing scene outside—and within.
Dr. Matt had given me zilch to work with, and he’d made it clear that he frowned on field trips. Lack of computers didn’t concern me. I considered their value in the classroom over-rated, anyway. But the chalk-and-talk method I’d been resorting to hadn’t accomplished much either. These kids had powers too hot to handle for their age and experience, like a bunch of thirteen-year-olds owning Lamborghini Diablos, worthless until their owners were old enough and skilled enough to drive them. Yet, my job was to help put these very thirteen-year-olds into the driver’s seat, someone who’d never even seen such a car up close, let alone driven one. Ethan squinted at me, his head at an angle. I wondered if anyone else was listening or if the rest of my students were caught up in their own worlds. Either was fine with me. Sometimes I talked too much when silence was what they needed.
Silence. Peace. Release. Death. I shivered at where my thoughts were headed but allowed them to flow unimpeded, eager to see where they would lead. A spark. Rebirth. Participation. Chaos. And there it was, my mind’s message shrunk down to size. Life means participation, which means sticking out one’s neck, which leads to chaos, which, in turn, leads to change. Nothing peaceful about it. My students would have to learn this on their own. And with Charles Lacoste and Dr. Matt’s current attitudes, they would likely speed the process along.
“Sounds like this class isn’t about learning, but unlearning,” Luke said at last.
My entry into the world of silence and release had been so complete I didn’t reply.
“I could get my parents really worked up with that one,” Jason added.
Codi jerked in her seat, her words woodpecker sharp. “If enough of us go blabbing to our parents about things they don’t understand, this class is doomed.”
Why did her remark sound like a foreshadowing of things to come?
“Dr. Matt hired me in part to help you get in touch with your special gifts and teach you how to direct them, so I think it’s time to do just that. Your energy is powerful but undefined and undirected. In other words, you don’t know what it is or what to do with it.”
“And you’re going to teach us?” Jason asked with bird-dog stillness.
He had every right to doubt my capability. I doubted it, too. But I came closer to understanding their unique powers than most of the teachers on campus, which counted for something. “I’m going to try.”
“How?”
“Through meditation, for starters.”
A raised eyebrow this time.
Ethan straightened in his chair as though sensing something foreign in the air. “You mean prayer?” I could imagine the wheels in his head turning. We can’t pray in school.
I reached out my hand than dropped it, trying to keep my voice neutral. “Prayer and meditation both use the mind. They’re both concentrated thoughts, but their goals are different.”
“How?”
“Well,
the best way I can put it is that with prayer you send your thoughts to a being outside of yourself, who can affect change in your world. With meditation you focus within to reach a heightened level of spiritual awareness. In a way, prayer is talking and meditation is listening, where you sit in silence so the force of whatever’s out there can pour into you.”
“And through you,” Tessa added. “Sometimes it…p-passes through you.”
“And into someone else,” Codi said, “like with Angelina.”
“Are you talking about God?” Ethan asked.
Luke pushed up his glasses and rubbed both eyes. “Give it up, Ethan.” His flaming hair was spiked this morning. A new hairstyle? Or neglect? With his nearly constant blush and thick distorting glasses, he didn’t stand a chance with females of his age, a shame, because his enthusiastic attention to life’s details and the optimism that fueled him shone like a healing, orange-yellow light.
“I didn’t say—” Ethan began.
But Luke cut him off. “Since we’re breaking a lot of other rules around here, and since it’s hard to talk about our talents without allowing for some kind of higher power, why not talk about God if we want to?”
Wow. I could have used that argument with Dr. Matt yesterday.
“I just want…” Ethan eyed the ceramic owl behind the glass doors of the cabinet.
“To stop h-urting,” Tessa finished for him. The words were spoken with difficulty, thus painful to hear, her crystal blue eyes mesmerizing, her pain visible for all to see. She, above all the others, was extremely sensitive to her environment, which meant she felt things deeply. She was compassionate, generous, and giving, a peacemaker who couldn’t abide conflict. No wonder she preferred to hide and hope no one noticed. Being a wallflower feels safe, but it also guarantees missed opportunities and the enrichment that comes through connection. As I was slowly discovering, pain comes when we take part in life, suffering when we resist. Thank goodness she’d chosen to engage instead of hide.
During the silence that followed, accompanied, of course, by wind and rain knocking at the classroom windows, I again wondered what was causing Tessa to stutter. She had selected a goose as her ceramic totem. Geese work together when they fly. They encourage one another by honking and rotating leadership position, using the wind to go long distances. Show us how to go with the flow, I said silently. Show us how to work together.
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