Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  Jennie liked to join Margret and Cybilla at a Seattle discotheque called Shelly’s Leg, owned by a young woman who had lost a leg in a cannon-firing accident and used the money obtained in a lawsuit settlement to open a night club. The disco had a large homosexual clientele, but Jennie was nonetheless welcomed for her passionate and uninhibited dancing. Once on the floor, she boogied with abandon, her rationale being that it was a good way to lose weight. She liked going to gay discos because “you don’t get hassled.” Now and then Jennie encountered a lesbian looking at her for a beat too long, but no overtures were made that she could not handle. More troubling to Jennie was the realization that when she was dancing she was the center of attraction, and she liked it. In fact, she cherished the spotlight. This probably violated some Buddhist tenet, she told Olga, but surely it would not destroy her soul.

  And there were special nights when Christopher was there, when they danced together for old times’ sake. Jennie pretended to be disinterested in her former lover, but from their vantage point, Margret and Cybilla could witness the longing in her eyes. It grew worse when Christopher appeared one evening with a girl friend, a thin young woman named Francine, who seemed vacant and boring to Jennie. Francine was not a good dancer, and Jennie seized upon this shortcoming to remind Christopher what it was like to partner a woman whose movements were sensual and exciting.

  But always Jennie went home alone, where she would first try to handle the anger that swelled over Christopher’s companion, then read from her Buddhist literature before falling wearily into bed and fighting back tears. All of this she tried to conceal from her friends, but rejection is the cancer of love. And heart break is impossible to hide.

  Jennie saw Madame Crystal less frequently, as she now lived farther away from the old woman’s neighborhood. But they stayed in telephone contact. One afternoon Jennie called her friend and was mildly disturbed when no one answered. Madame Crystal was deep into her eighties, infirm, and rarely went out anymore. When the phone rang unanswered again that night, and the next morning, Jennie called The Dealer, whose daily gin rummy games were no longer held because he could not see the spots on the cards. Where was Madame Crystal?

  “Well,” said The Dealer, “I believe she’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Jennie was shocked. How? When? Was he sure? The Dealer’s voice was old and cracked but he was able to tell the story. Madame Crystal had come down with the flu and seemed to be getting better. Then a turn for the worse; she would not let anybody enter the house to nurse her, for she lacked the strength to get dressed or put on makeup. Her sister was coming from Long Island, so the old people were not too worried. Then, when nobody answered the phone and when none of the old people heard from Madame Crystal for two or three days, a delegation went to visit. The front door was locked; inside, no sign of life. The plants were dying. A policeman came to break down the door. Madame Crystal was dead on the bathroom floor, dead for at least three days, so dead that she had sort of melted on the tiles.

  “Why didn’t someone call me?” cried Jennie.

  “I guess nobody thought of it,” answered The Dealer. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

  Jennie asked where Madame Crystal was buried. She wanted to visit her grave. “Then you’ll have to go to her sister’s house on Long Island. Crystal was cremated and they took her away in a tin box.”

  “I am so guilty,” Jennie told her friend Olga. “I loved Madame Crystal, but I didn’t show it when she needed me the most. Is there anything more cruel than to die alone? I hope she knows I loved her.” For three days Jennie secluded herself and meditated before a table filled with burning candles, hoping to speed Madame Crystal’s journey through reincarnation. She was certain the old woman would be reborn, that her “life force” would be renewed quickly. Christopher had once told Jennie of the Rosicrucian belief that reincarnation occurs forty-three days after death. Jennie prayed that she would become aware of her friend’s incarnation. It would assuage a part of her grief and guilt.

  Loneliness was now intolerable. Jennie dated frequently. She took a series of boy friends, none of whom lasted very long, none of whom was permitted intimacy. They were kept at arm’s length, Jennie explaining, if all else failed, that she had taken a vow of celibacy. It was true, in part, for Jennie was engaging in an informal sexual fast, trying to cleanse her spirit of “impure thought.” It was not her intention to stay celibate forever, she told Cybilla, “only until I decide who I am.” The girls sensed that Jennie was wrestling with a difficult decision, but one which she would not share. She seemed to be trying on several different hats. One night she accepted the invitation of a gay woman to go home, but once there they talked until almost dawn and then fell asleep in the same bed without touching one another. “I just wanted to see what it was like,” explained Jennie to Margret and Cybilla. “And I don’t think it’s for me.”

  The core of Jennie’s discontent was Christopher. She still loved him, no matter how many nights she lay alone and tried to deny him. The boys that Jennie dated did not know that she was using them as actors in a charade. But she often plotted to learn where Christopher was going on a particular night, then managed to show up with a new beau on her arm, seemingly happy, carefree, and glad to be purged of a childhood romance.

  Matters came to a head one evening in early 1975 at Margret’s house, where some of the girls were piercing their ears. Christopher was present with Francine, who was waiting her turn. Jennie appeared and watched, then turned abusive, making catty remarks about how a ring through Francine’s nose might be appropriate, so that Christopher could lead her around. Someone was smoking marijuana, and Jennie seized the joint, dragging on it deeply, turning up the record player to ear-shattering volume, dancing by herself provocatively, taking every opportunity to bump against Christopher. The others watched for a while with amusement, then everyone began to wish Jennie would clear out. Tonight she was a pain in the ass. Christopher asked Jennie to step outside for a breath of air.

  On the porch, Jennie fell straightaway into his arms and clutched him like a woman in jeopardy. The dam had broken, her emotions rushed out nakedly. She wanted him, she needed him, she loved him. Christopher was touched by the confession, but it was hardly news. Like everyone else he had seen through the flimsiness of Jennie’s behavior in recent months. He cradled her face in his slender hands and begged her to understand. It was simply not possible to give up Francine, for he loved her. “You and I agreed that we needed different experiences,” he reminded her. “We said we just couldn’t occupy the same space for a while. That’s still true.”

  Jennie’s tears kept falling. She began an angry assault against Francine—how could Christopher choose such a loser? He shushed her. “That’s beneath you,” he said. “These are negative forces of pride and hate coming out. You know how to deal with them. You know better than I do.”

  They embraced one last time, but it was fraternal. Once, while resting on their trek up the Himalayas, they had decided that their relationship was so warm and close that they must have been brother and sister in some long ago incarnation. Christopher searched now for a graceful way to end this painful confrontation. “Francine and I are going to Hawaii for a while,” he said. Jennie jerked her head up in shock. Was Christopher actually going on a trip with this girl? It seemed a desecration of everything they had done together. Christopher nodded. “When I get back, maybe we can …” His voice trailed off. He did not want to even hint at a reconciliation. But Jennie took it that way. A flicker of hope caught fire within her. She began to speak hurriedly of the coming summer; perhaps they could go camping, or even return to the Far East after Christopher was rid of Francine.

  With sadness, the gentle tall man stared down at the agonizing little girl below him. Jennie refused to understand that whatever they once had was indeed wondrous, but now it was gone. What remained was—on his part—only a special friendship. With that, he left her, unable to say more. Several days later, Christopher commented
to one of the girls in the crowd that Jennie had behaved “childishly.” Naturally the remark sped its way to Jennie, who said, sweetly and tartly, “Childish? He should know.”

  In the spring of 1975, Jennie went to Southern California for a meditation retreat sponsored by the Kopan Monastery. She was joyful in anticipation of a reunion with the two lamas from Nepal, Zopa Rinpoche and Yeshe, and for a week she sat at their feet drinking in wisdom and challenge. Then she requested a private moment with Lama Yeshe, a solemn, round little man with a face of both cheer and sorrow, as if the masks of comedy and tragedy had been joined. The lama was pleased to speak with Jennie, for he well remembered her stay in Katmandu. Then he asked what was on her mind; he could tell that she was troubled.

  Since her return to Seattle from the Far East, began Jennie, she had been struggling with “negative forces.” Often they overwhelmed her. She spoke candidly of her unfulfilled love for Christopher and his rejection of her, of moments when she had been tempted by dancing and drugs and homosexuality. In fact, she said, most of her twenty-one years had been pretty much of a disaster. Only in those precious days she had passed in meditation at the monastery, in the bosom of Mount Everest, only there did she feel contentment. The lama nodded. He understood the worth of her problem, the pain she was suffering, and the peace she had found at Kopan.

  “I have been thinking seriously about returning to the monastery and taking the vows of a nun,” she said.

  The lama was not surprised; hers was not a unique revelation. Often he encountered young people whose lives were not proceeding well and who felt miracles would occur in the romantic, once forbidden land of the Himalayas. A word of caution was always in order. “A change of locale may produce a new flower,” he counseled, “but the roots will have the same disease.” Rather than take the vows of a nun at this troubled moment of her life, the lama countersuggested that Jennie remain in the United States, continue her study and meditation, perform missionary work for the monastery, and, with diligence, reach the same enlightenment at home. No need for flight to Asia.

  Jennie wrestled with her soul when she returned to Seattle. Refusing to see friends, she turned them away on the pretense of study, or minor illness. Nor would she speak on the telephone. She did call Christopher and was annoyed to learn that he was still in Hawaii with Francine. During several weeks of contemplation, Jennie roamed about Seattle like a phantom, sitting for blank hours on a pier and gazing at the murky waters of Lake Washington, walking the streets with her head bent like an old worried woman, climbing a tree in her favorite park and perching in its branches. Then she made her decision.

  She would return to Katmandu. It was the only place on earth where she knew total peace. And there, despite what the lama had cautioned, she would probably take the vows of a nun.

  None of her friends knew the depth of Jennie’s reasons for her return to the East. All she told them was that she felt the need for further study at the monastery. No one suspected that it was in her mind to put on the robes and stay forever. She fantasized what they would all think, Margret and Cybilla and Olga and even Christopher, especially Christopher when and if he returned from his tryst with the hated Francine. She wanted them all to picture her on the day of ordination, after Lama Yeshe had become convinced that her motives were genuine and that she had taken the necessary “refuge” in Buddha, his doctrine, and in Sangha, a monastic community of at least five fully ordained monks. Then she would go to a barber in the city of Katmandu to have her hair shorn, save one last lock. After a lifetime of bleaching, tinting, dyeing, teasing, cutting, spraying, and styling, how wonderful it would be to rise each morning and having nothing but a fuzzy scalp! Then, on the special day of days, Jennie would go to the tailor and pick up her newly sewn robes of burgundy wool and saffron trim. Her sisters would accompany her on the long walk back to the monastery, singing their love all the way, through the terraced fields of rice, past the obedient yoked water buffalo, laughing at the temple dogs that darted out to pester passersby. And in the distance—the fog-shrouded crown of the Himalayas. Perhaps, on Jennie’s special morning, the clouds would move away and bless the newest nun with a clear view of the greatest panorama. An omen!

  Then, clad in her robes, her face shining, she would swear to thirty-six ancient vows in the presence of five fully ordained monks, including, perhaps, one of the tutors of His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself. Jennie would promise not to handle gold or silver, not to sleep in a high or wide bed, not to engage in worldly entertainments, not to engage in any sexual activity, not to sit in a chair that had been occupied by a person who had taken more vows. Finally, she would be blessed by the lama, who would cut off the last remaining lock of hair and pronounce her new name. Part of it would be taken from the name of the lama who ordained her, another part from his guru, thus continuing the lineage.

  And thus would a past be wiped away. Jennie knew from conversation with another Western nun that it took months, perhaps a year or two before thoughts of a previous life in America were first blurred, then abandoned. But she was ready for a life similar to that of the Carmelites, one of contemplation and prayer, study and meditation. On her ordination day she would reach sramanerika, the beginning plateau for a Buddhist nun. After more meditation and study, she could progress to the highest level—bhikku. The word means “beggar.”

  But all of these thoughts Jennie kept to herself. She could not trust the girls in Seattle to understand. Nor would Christopher appreciate the clarity of her purpose. There was also the consideration that she might change her mind. Jennie well knew that each year a few men and women “took off their robes” and left the monastery in failure and disgrace, unable to cope with the severity of the life, and condemned to the anguish of having reneged on a paramount commitment. Should that unlikely tragedy befall Jennie, she would not want anyone else to know it.

  “I think I was meant to go!” exclaimed Jennie a few weeks later. The money was pouring into her secret treasure box that once contained a prom invitation and a crushed corsage. Now it housed a tiny statue of Buddha blessed by the Dalai Lama, a photograph of Christopher standing beside a great temple in Katmandu, and a growing pile of currency to finance her return to Nepal.

  She sold her VW the first day she taped a “For Sale” sign on its cracked back window. A garage sale cleared out furniture and clothes. A long-forgotten hundred-dollar loan made to a friend in California years earlier suddenly arrived in the mail with a note of apology. Within six weeks, Jennie had enough to buy a one-way air ticket to Katmandu, and an additional $1,500. As the monastery only requested thirty dollars a month for room and board—and even that was not obligatory—she was assured now that the trip was possible. She set an early date in October 1975 for departure.

  With time running out, Jennie needed to take care of the loose threads that dangled from her life. She visited each of her friends, apologizing for forgotten and trivial social misdemeanors that somehow seemed important to her. Only Christopher remained, and though he was back in town from Hawaii and now openly living with Francine, she could not push herself to call him.

  Instead she hurried to California to say goodbye to Maggie and Cap. They were pleased with the manner in which their granddaughter had matured. Many of Jennie’s girlhood friends were either divorced, in jail, caught up in heavy drug tragedies, or condemned to lives of boredom in dead-end jobs and marriages. But Jennie walked with serenity, and seemed to have purpose, and was spunky enough to go after what she wanted. Still a devout Catholic, Maggie was not overjoyed that her granddaughter prayed to Buddha, but Cap reminded her that since hundreds of millions of people in the world worshiped the potbellied gentleman with the benevolent smile-many more than those who prayed to Jesus Christ—there must be something to it.

  Only one incident marred the last days at her grandparents’ home. Maggie passed by Jennie’s old room and heard her weeping softly. “What’s the matter, honey?” asked Maggie, unable to resist entering and sitting beside h
er on the bed.

  “Oh, Grandma, if I have to come home, will you send the money?” said Jennie, with urgency in her voice.

  “Come home? But you haven’t even gotten there yet. How much money are you talking about?”

  “Maybe two thousand dollars.”

  “If I have two thousand dollars when you need it, it’s yours. You know that.” Jennie nodded and hugged her grandmother, who started at that moment to worry. She wondered if Jennie had some kind of premonition she would not share.

  Later that day, Jennie was poring over a map with Cap, who as an old sailor envied the young woman’s journeys over the seas of his salad years. Jennie intended to fly from Seattle to Hong Kong, and thence, if time and money permitted, on to Bangkok for a day or two, there being an important Buddhist temple in the city which she wanted to visit. She would reach Katmandu in the latter part of October. She promised to write at least three times a week.

  “Bangkok?” echoed Maggie. She frowned. “Don’t go to Bangkok.”

  “Why not?” asked Jennie.

  “I don’t know,” said Maggie. “It’s just a funny feeling I just got when you said the word. You’re so friendly and outgoing and naïve that someone might take advantage of you.”

  Jennie smiled and looked conspiratorially at Cap. They shared a love of adventure that Maggie did not have. “Oh, Grandma,” she sighed. “I’m a Buddhist. Nobody would harm me.”

  On her last afternoon at Maggie’s, Jennie rang up Carmen, her friend from the beach years. The two young women spent a happy afternoon of reunion together. Several other girls from the old days dropped by and the afternoon was magic. Carmen remembered it well: “We were like teen-agers again at a slumber party—gossiping, discussing boys, evil teachers, drug trips, séances, mystical experiences—the whole grab bag. All of us drank wine and got tight as a drum—except Jennie. She didn’t drink a drop and she was the happiest girl in the room. Bubbly!” The others envied Jennie, for her eyes were clear, and her face, naked of makeup, glowed with health and vision.