Nat was creeping down the stairs, shoulders hunched, his hands together in a pleading manner. I wasn’t going to hang around to absolve him for his wrong doings. “Ella, I’m waiting outside. I don’t want to hear anymore.”
Ella kissed Adolfo on the cheek and they muttered something about meeting again to discuss importing coffee. I hardly heard, I was already on my way to the front door. After waiting a few minutes in the chilly night air, the taxi arrived, bringing us back to our accommodation. “Are you really mad with me?” Ella inquired sheepishly after we’d sat into the taxi.
“No I’m not, Ella. Funny thing is, I find myself believing Adolfo, despite the bull – or the sheep, for that matter. I don’t think Nat’s a bad guy and he probably is trying hard to battle an addiction. On the other hand, he could be a pure chancer.” I laughed. “But now I’m more damaged than ever. Apparently I’m as sexy as any old sheep. I mean seriously how do I recover from that bitter blow to my ego?”
Chapter Sixteen
“Are you all right, Ella? I’m off for my final crystal bed session.”
Ella had endured a bad bout of vomiting after absentmindedly downing a miniature bottle of gin she’d found in her suitcase two days after she began taking herbs. The retching went on so long, I worried her oesophagus would turn inside out. Being a hypochondriac ex-doctor’s wife had its advantages at times – I permanently carried a portable pharmacy with me. I had motillium to quell the nausea and buscopan to stop the spasm in her gut. Soon I had her back on her feet but I thought she still looked a little shook. “Perfect. I’m going for a massage.” A smirk formed at the edge of her mouth. “How are you after your invisible operation?”
I shrugged, “I didn’t feel or notice anything – we had to keep our eyes closed. I wasn’t even sure when the Healer came in to say prayers over us, since a couple of attendants were already praying in Portuguese before he arrived. And I haven’t felt any different since.”
“Do you think it is for real? And what about the crystal bed thing … I found it a bit disappointing. Thought I’d be stretched out on a giant slab of crystal instead of lying on an ordinary therapy bed with a row of crystals glaring down on top of me. Now how could that possibly do you any good, Kate? I mean this thing about crystals having power?” Ella gathered up her purse and phone from her bed, slipping them into her bag.
“I used to think so too, Ella, but I’ve researched it on-line and discovered that all rocks have vibrations. You know how we’ve such problems with limestone in Ireland in the foundation of houses and the radon gases emitted from it?”
“Mm… I remember when I got that last x-ray for my back, I told the radiologist I hated the idea of radiation. She assured me that sitting on a stone wall in some areas of County Clare would do more harm. So tell me what’s so good about these crystals.”
“Do you remember the watches we had as kids? In those days the status of your watch wasn’t determined by which designer brand it was. We all checked to see how many jewels they contained and you’d find the number written in tiny letters on the face. Well apparently those little jewels or crystals helped to power the mechanism. Same thing with radios.”
“You’re right! I remember gran called the radio a ‘crystal set’. Is that the reason?”
“Yes, and the crystals on the arm above the so-called crystal bed are designed by the famous IBM scientist Marcel Vogel, who designed the coating for IBM’s hard disk drive. His research proved that all quartz crystals, cut to a set of exact specifications, produce a specific laser-like energy. He did experiments proving crystals were both filled with energy and could act as conduits of energy which is why they are used in watches, radios and modern medical devices.”
“God, Kate you sound like Spock. So, what about the chakra thing?”
“I read about that in Maria’s book. Apparently the light beams from the seven crystals down on your seven chakras or energy centres. They supposedly help balance our bodies. The word chakra means ‘wheel of light’. Each of the chakras corresponds to seven different areas of the body which affect the health of the organs in that band.” As I spoke I touched my throat, heart and stomach as an example of some of the areas I could remember. “Emotions are stored in each centre, which may block the flow of energy and cause disease. So theoretically … working on balancing your chakras will help release emotions, get your energy flowing and aid the body’s ability to fight disease.”
Ella rubbed her tummy with one hand and touched her back with the other. “So I have a lower back problem and digestive upsets happening in the same area. What does that mean?”
“It means your creative and sexual chakra need clearing,” I winked.
“Ha … So the answer is to find a man and get my new career up and running.”
I headed out the door laughing.
Having walked to the long low building in front of the ashram gardens, I was met by an attendant who led me into one of the small dark rooms where relaxation music played. I took off my shoes and she handed me an eye mask to wear over my eyes. “Lie down on the therapy bed and make yourself comfortable.” She placed a light cotton blanket over me and aligned each crystal over the relevant areas of my body before switching on the lights overhead. In the background, music played, similar to the soothing bajans played in the ashram. I lay there breathing deeply, anticipating once more being swept away by a peaceful bliss. Instead images arose in my mind, beyond my control.
I suddenly found myself transported back eighteen years to the most awful morning of my life. My stomach knotted and twisted as pain pierced my chest to the point I couldn’t breathe. Beads of sweat formed on my brow and my back felt as though I was lying on a bed of hot coals. My chest constricted, I panted in an effort to breathe but the dull ache I’d lived with every day started to become so acute I felt I’d been stabbed. “No!” I stifled my cry, a creature-like shriek of torment that came from somewhere deep … outside and inside me, both at the same time. My arms wrapped around my body, I dug my nails deep into my bare arms. I felt bound, straight-jacketed by my own embrace, yet I wanted to run or at the very least tear tormented flesh from my bones – inflict physical pain in order not to feel the real pain. “Why?” My voice echoed in a plaintive cry from the bowels of some unearthly place. Thoughts tumbled inside my head – why had my baby David been taken from me? Did God want to punish me for some cruel reason? I’d been tormented by it every single day of my life. Rarely a day had passed when I hadn’t thought of David and what he would be doing. Learning to swim or ride a bicycle, swotting for exams, getting ready to join Julie in college. David in love for the first time.
I thought I’d learnt to live with the grief and be philosophical, grateful that at least I had Julie. But now the entire episode was being replayed again. It started with the joy of holding my beautiful baby son, so perfect in every way. God … I’d sell my soul to step back in time to smell David’s baby smell, to touch his soft skin and hold him close. I knew I’d die aching for one last moment with him – begging for a single moment. Why were the feelings so raw now – as raw as though it had just happened yesterday? If there was a God, how could he be so cruel – so vindictive?
All of a sudden I let go, exhausted from my own intensity, no longer able to fight tgo of the fearhe torrent. Sharp aches cracked through my chest, my abdomen and my head, and just as it seemed it would finally break me, an image arose of me as a warrior breaking the rock of pain with a sledge hammer. Sighing, surrendering to deep breaths as though I were being breathed into by a bellows operated by a winged angel. Tears flowing … now tears of love, intense love, radiant as the Healer’s that day in the Casa. David’s essence emerging, all around me as I sink into an awareness of having been blessed to borrow him from heaven – for he was never Earth’s nor mine to own.
The handle turned and the door creaked open, just as I pictured my hand reaching out to David’s tiny index finger. Regretful the session had ended, I put on my sandals and quietly gathered
my things to stumble outside in the direction of the garden overlooking a wild meadow of tumbling hills and forest beyond. Aromas of warm soup made with onions and root vegetables wafted on the breeze as I passed near the soup hatch. Pilgrims congregated outside at wooden tables, eating and chatting in competing dialects. But I was lost in my thoughts. I took my seat on a deserted bench on the wooden veranda where pilgrims sometimes went for private meditation and reflection. As I inhaled scents of lavender and jasmine, it struck me as strange that I was supposed to be living in the present moment and yet I had been forcibly sent back to face the past. Then I remembered what Aidan Whyte said on one occasion: If you have not dealt with past issues they will continuously come up for healing. You drugged yourself with Prozac to deaden the pain. Let go of the fear and allow yourself to feel every emotion and you may find you can handle it. Walk right into the pain – remember, you are bigger than any one emotion.” What he had said seemed abstract at the time and I hadn’t understood it, as though emotion was a foreign language I couldn’t or didn’t wish to grasp.
Opening my satchel, I took out a pen and the floppy A4 pad I’d brought as a temporary “feelings journal”, intending to enter into what Whyte called a stream of consciousness – allowing words to appear without thinking. My eye followed my hand scribbling random words around the page: God and punishment … Mother’s story … Grim reaper … The Prophet … Snow Queen … Thaw. I felt I’d entered a vortex with my memory acting as a time machine spiralling backwards.
Trevor had been so happy as the locals in Kiltilough had congratulated us. “You’ve one of each, a boy and a girl, the perfect gentleman’s family.” I’d never heard the phrase before and have rarely heard it since. It seemed to imply we had pulled off some mighty stroke, favoured by the Gods smiling down upon us. David had been a quiet baby from the start, only crying if he needed feeding or a nappy change – unlike Julie, who had been very difficult to get to sleep. Initially it made me nervous and I often held a mirror close to his face to check he was still breathing.
Then it seemed, when I’d finally begun to relax, I awoke one morning with an eerie sense of heightened perception … a sense of time no longer existing. Accompanied by a gnawing emptiness in my chest, I walked towards the nursery and remained for what seemed an eternity rooted to the outer threshold, unable to enter the room. “Don’t look up,” said the voice in my head. I stared at swirling shadows towards the edge of the carpet, cast from a colourful fish mobile attached to the lampshade and blown by a mocking breeze from the slightly open window. Standing there in the middle of the room was Trevor wearing burgundy-striped pyjamas. Stared at by a huge smiling Eeyore on one shelf and Winnie the Pooh on the other, he held our adorable baby boy in his arms as tears flowed down his ashen cheeks. I knew before I walked over to touch David’s alabaster skin and cradle his doll-like remains, clad in a lemon velvet baby-gro. It seemed like I’d known upon waking that he was taken from me. But I could do nothing, not even scream or cry for a very long time afterwards.
The days and months that followed seemed to go by in some sort of haze. The Sudden Infant Death Association put us in touch with other couples who had suffered the same experience. It was good to talk to people who had been through the same awful ordeal, but I couldn’t break the endless cycle of self-blame. I knew the starting point of my anxiety had really come into play when I had begun to lean on Trevor for support and direction. I had become another person – the bohemian, enquiring bubbly girl I had once been had died with my baby. Died with David.
Liz came to visit and offer her support in those early days. I told her over and over again in the week that followed, “I was his mother. I should have been better tuned into him. I should have known something was wrong.”
“Kate, you did everything right. These things cannot be prevented. You breast fed him for three months … no, don’t tell me you should have done longer. Stop being so hard on yourself. Do you remember the story of a mother, by Hans Christian Anderson, that Dad read to us as children? It suggests that a child’s hour of death is decided before birth and nobody should interfere in that.”
I had momentarily stopped sobbing as I remembered the story of how the mother tried to bargain with the Grim Reaper until he explained that one of two plants in his garden represented her baby son’s soul. The first was capable of spreading happiness and healing to everyone he met whereas the second would only bring evil and destruction. When asked did she still want to interfere in God’s plan, the woman declined. I said angrily, “Well if God knew everything in advance, couldn’t he have ensured David had the good genes?”
Liz didn’t give up so easily. “We only ever have our children on loan – they are never ours to own.” She continued her theme of parables in hopes of calming me, paraphrasing a section from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet – a book I had given her one Christmas and had thought she was dismissive of at the time. Obviously, she had found it meaningful even if she couldn’t remember the exact words to quote. It felt strangely more comforting to believe that David had been like an angel, merely visiting me for a brief time. This perception cracked through the endless “if onlys” and spoke to a deeper part of me where the need for analysis wasn’t necessary. Yes, Liz had been a torrent of strength and wisdom and that had helped me in the early days
The overhead cries of a white-crested eagle awakened me from my reverie, bringing me back to Brazil and the present moment. I turned the page in my journal to write:
I’d become so adrift from my feelings. I’d become a bit like the Snow Queen, freezing my heart in ice to protect it. It finally broke again when my marriage ended. But the value of a broken heart is that it can be put back together and made whole. The real thaw and healing began today on the crystal bed. I was astounded when I glanced over the last two lines of what I had written. It was through identifying with characters in stories, no matter how childish, that I could begin to accept and trust in a divine plan. I thought back to my experience on the crystal bed and was comforted that in some strange way my connection to the divine had grown and suddenly I had a renewed faith in the words my mother had uttered about David: “He’s an angel now and will always be with you.”
Chapter Seventeen
We arrived at the airport after sharing a taxi with two American sisters we’d met in our poussada. Ella had booked a flight to Rio and rescheduled her flights home for a later date, claiming it would be a mortal sin not to take in Rio after coming this far. And since she had come on a pilgrimage it would be better not to commit such a grave sin. On the lookout for a good business opportunity, she was determined to investigate products in Rio, having discussed importing coffee with Adolfo.
After check-in we met for a browse around the shops in the small airport terminal before entering duty free, stopping suddenly outside a lingerie shop with the most stunning negligee in the window. More like a very sexy evening gown, it really had the “wow” factor, with a silk satin skirt flowing from an uplift lace bra bodice, encrusted with black bugle beads. “Oh Ella, isn’t that amazing?” I remembered how Trevor used to buy me nice lingerie. Despite my pilgrimage, I still found it difficult to be a woman alone. I regularly received emails from “luvpicasso” aka Geoff, but he was my only contact and we remained platonic friends. It would most likely continue in that vein, as he’d told me in the last one that he had met a girl from the site and had been dating her for the past three weeks. It was just as well I hadn’t wanted anything to develop with him; I needed time to continue the healing which had so recently begun.
We went into the shop and checked the back of the gown. Its lace panel tapered to a V at the centre back below the bodice, through which a matching lace thong could be seen. The doll-like Brazilian shop assistant smiled and purred in response to our interest. “It’s magnificent, no?” Her doe eyes lit up as she daintily turned the price tag to show us. “Not expensive for you – no? You American?”
“No, Irish.” Ella nudged me. “That’s an outf
it to drive a man out of his mind. It’s a Goddess gown. And not that expensive – if it had an Italian label it would cost three times that.”
“It’s still expensive for a negligee.” I considered. “Unless you converted it to evening wear by adding a silk slip underneath.”
“Creative as ever, Kate. How are you so brilliant? An evening gown for one hundred and fifty dollars …” She whispered into my ear. “You try it on for size and if it looks well on you I’m going to buy it and try to get it copied. Maybe I’ll see if I can prise any information out of the sales girl about the designer.”
Five minutes later I emerged from behind the curtains of the tiny fitting room to call Ella over and at the same time have a look in the nearby mirror. “Oh my God!” It was my face, but it didn’t look remotely like my body with the clever corsetry uplifting my very average breasts to display a magnificent cleavage.
“Gorgeous, Kate. You look like you could go to the Oscars in that gown,” Ella said, and the assistant murmured in agreement.
“Well, if it had an under slip …” I returned to the changing room to put my own clothes on.
“This designer is a friend of mine. I met her when I was modelling,” I could hear the girl telling Ella as they waited for me to get dressed. “What about you? Can I help you pick something special?”
“You can wrap up the gown and I’ll pay for it. But do you mind me asking where your designer friend lives?”
“Are you going to Sao Paulo?”
“No, Rio, but I’m interested in looking at importing a variety of products.”
“Then my friend may very well meet you in Rio. Here is her business card.” The young woman handed Ella a gold-embossed card, just as I emerged from the fitting room. With forty minutes to spare before I was due to board my plane to Lima, we sat drinking coffee from paper cups on a plastic bench in the duty free area, as busy commuters passed by.
Love & The Goddess Page 14